England's Ideal, and Other Papers on Social Subjects

Google

This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project

to make the world's books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject

to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books

are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover.

Marks, notations and other maiginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the

publisher to a library and finally to you.

Usage guidelines

Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the
public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing tliis resource, we liave taken steps to
prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying.
We also ask that you:

+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for
personal, non-commercial purposes.

+ Refrain fivm automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine
translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the
use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.

+ Maintain attributionTht GoogXt "watermark" you see on each file is essential for in forming people about this project and helping them find
additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.

+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just
because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other
countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of
any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner
anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liabili^ can be quite severe.

About Google Book Search

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers
discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web

at |http: //books .google .com/I

/

J-

if

)

ENGLAND'S IDEAL

mo I :
Slid ntkiii jpams

SOCIAL SUBJECTS

BV

EDWARD CARPENTER.

LONDON:

SWAN SONNENSCHEIN, LOWREY fi CO.,

PATERNOSTER SQUARE.

1887.

COPYRIGHT.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR!

TOWARDS DEMOCRACY,

I

2nd Edition, 1885^ with numerous added Poems
crown 8vo, cloth, pp. 260, price 2s. 6d.

" A book whose power will certainly make it known."— Z>»3//«
Unit>ersiiy Review,

"Truly * mystic, wonderful'— like nothing so much as a nightmare
after too earnest a study of the Koran ! ^'—Graphic.

" Its plan includes a poetical appead to the diflferent nationalities
of the world, a sketch of the characteristic features of England and
English towns, and all kinds of industrial work, finally a series of
dramatic pict^tj^ '^^hofte ^yijlQ^s^ an4 ^au^y Qfej^ magical."—

MODERN SCIENCE:
A Criticism. Crown 8vo, stiff paper, pp. 75,

JOHN HEYWOOD, klBf^WPlfiP^ MANCHESTER

AND

II, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, LONDON.

m

ENGLAND'S IDEAL

" Behold the hire of the laborers, . . . which is of you kept back by fraud,
crieth : and the cries of them . . . are entered into the ears of the Lord of
Sabaoth."

While it seems to be admitted now on all hands that
the social condition of this country is about as bad as it
can be, and while many schemes, more or less philanthropic
or revolutionary, are proposed for its regeneration, it just oc-
curs to me to bring forward, by way of balance, the importance
of personal actions and ideals. For as the nation is composed
of individuals, so the forces which move the individual — the
motives, the ideals, which he has in his mind — are, it
seems to me, the main factors in any nation's progress, and
the things which ultimately decide the direction of its
movement.

At the bottom, and behind all the elaborations of econo-
mic science, theories of social progress, the changing forms
of production^ and class warfare, lies to-day the fact that the
old ideals of society have become corrupt, and that this cor-
ruption has resulted in dishonesty of life. It is this dis-
honesty of personal life which is becoming the occasion of
a new class-war, from whose bloody parturition struggle will
arise a new ideal — destined to sway human society for
many a thousand years, and to give shape to the forms of
its industrial, scientific, and artistic life.*

* What this new Ideal of Humanity will be I will not attempt here to fore-
shadow. Sufficient that honesty^Xht honest human relation — must obviously be
essential to it. As the ideal of the Feudal Age was upheld and presented to the
world in its great poetry, so the new ideal of the Democratic Age will be upheld
•nd presented to toe world in the great poetry of Democracy*

B

2 England's ideal.

The feeling, indeed, seems to be spreading that England
stands already on the verge of a dangerous precipice ; at
any moment the door may open for her on a crisis more
serious than any in her whole history, j Rotten to the core,
penetrated with falsehood from head to foot, her aristocracy
emasculated of all manly life, her capitalist classes wrapped
in selfishness, luxury, and self-satisfied philanthropy, her
Government offices — army, navy, and the rest — utterly
effete, plethoric, gorged (in snake-like coma) with red
tape,* her Church sleeping profoundly — snoring aloud — her
trading classes steeped in deception and money greed, her
laborers stupefied with overwork and beer, her poorest
stupefied with despair, there is not a point which will bear
examination, not a wheel in the whole machine which will
not give way under pressure, ^he slightest disturbance
now, and the wheels will actuafly cease to go round : the
first serious strain — European or Eastern war — and who
knows but that the governing classes of England will suc-
cumb disgracefully. And then — with an exhausting war
upon us, our foreign supplies largely cut off, our own
country (which might grow ample food for its present popu-
lation) systematically laid waste and depopulated by land-
lords, with hopeless commercial depression, stagnation of
trade, poverty, and growing furious anarchy — our position
will be easier imagined than described.

India — with its "forty millions always on the verge of
starvation " — the playground of the sons of English capital-
ists — must go. Ireland, that has nobly struck the note of
better things to all Europe, but who in her long and glorious
battle for freedom has received no encouragement from the
English people, will desert us. We shall call to her for

* An inteUigent officer of our owa navy having lately had occasion to inspect one
of the naval departments at Washington, tells me that in organisation, alertness,
modern information, and despatch of business it altogether surpasses our own
corresponding Admiralty department, and leaves it far behind t As to the state of
our army departments, we Imow what that is only too well.

ENGLAND'S IDEAL. 3

help, but there shall be no answer — but derision. Egypt
will curse the nation of Bondholders.

In the face then of these considerations let us go straight
to the heart of the matter. Let us, let all who care or hold
ourselves in any way responsible for the fate of a great
nation, redeem our lives, redeem the life of England, from
this curse of dishonesty. The difficulty is that to many
people — and to whole classes — mere honesty seems such a
small matter. If it were only some great Benevolent Insti-
tution to recommend ! But this is like Naaman's case in
the Bible : to merely bathe in the Jordan and make yourself
clean — is really too undignified !

But the disease from which the nation is suffering is dis-
honesty ; the more you look into it the clearer you will per-
ceive that this is so. Let us confess it. What we have
all been trying to do is to live at the expense of other
people's labor, without giving an equivalent of our own
labor in return. Some succeed, others only try; but it
comes to much the same thing.

I^et a man pause just for once in this horrid scramble of
modern life, and ask himself what he really consumes day
by day of other people's labor — ^what in the way of food,
of clothing, of washing, scrubbing, and the attentions of
domestics, or even of his own wife and children — what
money he spends in drink, dress, books, pictures, at the
theatre, in travel. Let him sternly, and as well as he may,
reckon up the sum total by which he has thus made himself
indebted to his fellows, and then let him consider what he
creates for their benefit in return. Let him strike the balance.
Is he a benefactor of society ? — is it quits between him and
his countrymen and women ? — or is he a dependent upon
them, a vacuum and a minus quantity ? — a beggar, alms-
receiver, or thief?

And not only What is he ? but What is he trying to be ?

B 2

England's ideal.

For on the Ideal hangs the whole question. Here at last
we come back to the root of national life. What the ideal
cherished by the people at large is, that the nation will soon
become. Each individual man is not always sure to realise
the state of life that he has in his mind, but in the nation it
is soon realised ; and if the current idea of individuals is to
get as much and give as little as they can, to be debtors of
society and alms-receivers of the labor of others, then you
have the spectacle of a nation, as England to-day, rushing
on to bankruptcy and ruin, saddled with a huge national
debt, and converted into one gigantic workhouse arid idle
shareholders' asylum. (Imagine a lot of people on an
island — all endeavoring to eat other people's dinners, but
taking precious care not to provide any of their own —
and you will have a picture of what the " well-to-do " on
this island succeed in doing, and a lot of people not well-
to-do are trying to arrive at.)

For there is no question that this is the Ideal of England
to-day — to live dependent on others, consuming much and
creating next to nothing* — to occupy a spacious house,
have servants ministering to you, dividends converging Irom
various parts of the world towards you, workmen handing you
the best part of their labor as profits, tenants obsequiously
bowing as they disgorge their rent, and a good balance at
the bank ; to be a kind of human sink into which much
flows but out of which nothing ever comes — except an oc-
casional putrid whifF of Charity and Patronage — this, is it
not the thing \yhich we have before us ? which if we have
not been fortunate enough to attain to, we are doing our
best to reach.

Sad that the words "lady" and "gentleman" — once
nought but honorable — should now have become so

r

f

L

* By fine irony called " haviqg an intfepeodence,**

England's ideal. 5

soiled by all ignoble use. But I fear that nothing can
save them. The modern Ideal of Gentility is hopelessly
corrupt, and it must be our avowed object to destroy it.

Of course, among its falsities, the point which I have
already alluded to is the most important. It is absolutely
useless for the well-to-do of this country to talk of Charity
while they are abstracting the vast sums they do from the
laboring classes, or to pretend to alleviate by philanthropic
nostrums the frightful poverty which they are creating whole-
sale by their mode of life. All the money given by the
Church, by charity organisations, by societies or individuals*
or out of the rates, and all the value of the gratuitous work
done by country gentlemen, philanthropists, and others, is a
mere drop in the ocean compared with the sums which
these same people and their relatives abstract from the poor,
under the various legal pretences of interest, dividends,
rent, profits, and state-payments of many kinds. " They
clean the outside of the cup and platter, but within they are
full of extortion and excess P

If for every man who consumes more than he creates there
must of necessity be another man who has to consume less
than he creates, what must be the state of affairs in that nation
where a vast class— and ever vaster becoming — is living in
the height of unproductive wastefulness ? Obvious!) another
vast class — and ever vaster becoming — must be sinking
down into the abyss of toil, penury, and degradation.
Look at Brighton and Scarborough and Hastings and the
huge West End of London, and the polite villa residences
which like unwholesome toadstools dot and disfigure the
whole of this great land. On what are these " noble *'
mansions of organised idleness built except upon the bent
back of poverty and lifelong hopeless unremitting toil !
Think ! you who live in them, what your life is, and upon
what it is founded.

6 England's ideal.

As far as the palaces of the rich stretch through Mayfair
and Belgravia and South Kensington, so far (and farther)
must the hovels of the poor inevitably stretch in the opposite
direction. There is no escape. It is useless to talk about
better housing of these unfortunates unless you strike at the
root of their poverty ; and if you want to see the origin and
explanation of an East London rookery, you must open the
door and walk in upon some fashionable dinner party at
the West End, where elegance, wealth, ease, good gram-
mar, politeness, and literary and sentimental conversation
only serve to cover up and conceal a heartless mockery —
the lie that it is a fine thing to live upon the labor of
others. You may abolish the rookery, but if you do not
abolish the other thing, the poor will only find some other
place to die in ; and one room in a sanitary and respectable
neighborhood will serve a family for that purpose as well
as a whole house in a dirtier locality. If this state of affairs
were to go on long (which it won't do) England would be
converted, as I have said, into one vast workhouse and
pauper asylum, in which rows of polite paupers, sur-
rounded by luxuries and daintily fed, would be entirely
served and supported by another class — of paupers unable
to get bread enough to eat !

But the whole Gentility business is corrupt throughout
and will not bear looking into for a moment. It is incom-
patible with Christianity (at least as Christ appears to have
taught it) ; it gives a constant lie to the doctrine of human
brotherhood.

The wretched man who has got into its toils must surren-
der that most precious of all things — the human relation to
the mass of mankind. He feels a sentimental sympathy
certainly for his " poorer brethren ; " but he finds that he
lives in a house into which it would be simply an insult to
ask one of them ; he wears clothes in which it is impossible

England's ideal. 7

for him to do any work of ordinary usefulness. If he sees
an old woman borne down by her burden in the street, he
can run to the charity organisation perhaps and get an
officer to enquire into her case — but he cannot go straight
up to her like a man, and take it from her on to his own
shoulders ; for he is a gentleman, and might soil his clothes !
It is doubtful even whether— clothes or no clothes, old wo-
man or no old woman — he could face the streets where he
is known with a bundle on his shoulders ; his dress is a
barrier to all human relation with simple people, and his
words of sympathy with the poor and suffering are wasted
on the wide air while the flash of his jewellery is in their
eyes.

He finds himself among people whose constipated man-
ners and frozen speech are a continual denial of all natural
affection — ^and a continual warning against offence ; where
to say 'onesty is passable, but to say 'ouse causes a positive
congestion ; where human dignity is at such a low ebb that
to have an obvious patch upon your coat would be con-
sidered fatal to it ; where manners have reached (I think)
the very lowest pitch of littleness and niaiserie\ where
human wants and the sacred facts, sexual and other, on
which human life is founded, are systematically ignored ;
where to converse with a domestic at the dinner table would
be an unpardonable breach of etiquette ; where it is assumed
as a matter of course that you do nothing for yourself — to
lighten the burden which your presence in the world neces-
sarily casts upon others ; where to be discovered washing
your own linen, or cooking your own dinner, or up to the
elbows in dough on 'baking day, or helping to get the coals
in, or scrubbing your own floor, or cleaning out your own
privy, would pass a sentence of lifelong banisliment on you ;
where all dirty work, or at least such work as is considered
dirty by the '* educated '' people in a household, is thrust

8 England's ideal.

upon young and ignorant girls ; where children are brought
up to feel far more shame at any little breach of social de-
corum — at an ** h *' dropped,* or a knife used in the
wrong place at dinner, or a wrong appellative given to a
visitor — than at glaring acts of selfishness and uncharit-
ableness.

In short, the unfortunate man finds himself in a net of
falsehoods ; the whole system of life around him is founded
on falsehood. The pure beautiful relation of humanity, the
most sacred thing in all this world, is betrayed at every
step ; and Christianity with its message of human love.
Democracy with its magnificent conception of inward and
sacramental human equality, can only be cherished by him
in the hidden interior of his being ; they can have no real
abiding place in his outward life.

And when he turns to the sources from which his living
is gained, he only flounders from the quagmire into the
bog. The curse of dishonesty is upon him ; he can find no
bottom anywhere.

The interest of his money comes to him he knows not
whence ; it is wrung from the labour of someone — he knows
not whom. His capital is in the hands of railway companies,
and his dividends are gained in due season — but how ?
He dares not enquire. What have companies, what have
directors and secretaries and managers to do with the ques-
tion whether justice is done to the workmen ? and when

* The explanation, as far as I can discover, of this mysterious iniquity is as
follows : It is a notorious tendency in lan^age, as it progresses, to drop the
aspiration. Thus the "h," though common m Latin, is extinct in the derivative
Italian and only feebly surviving m French. In English the singular phenomenon
presents itself of there being two usages — the "h" being practically extinct
among the mass ef the people, while it is dung to with tenacity by the more or
less literary classes (and with exaggerated tenacity by those who ape these classes).
The explanation seems to be that the natural progress cf language has gone on
among the people at large, but has been checlced among the lettered classes by
the conservative influence of the arts of printing and writing. And that it should
be possible for one section of the community thus to slide past the other, and for
two usages so to be established, only illustrates the completeness of class alienation
tnat exists in this country.

I

England's ideal.

did a shareholder ever rise up and contend that dividends
ought to be less and wages more ? (I met with a case once
in a report : but he was hissed down.)

His rents come to him from land and houses. Shall he
go round and collect them himself ? No, that is impossible.
This farmer would show him such a desperate balance-sheet,
that widow would plead such a piteous tale, this house
might be in too disgraceful a state, and entail untold re-
pairs. No, it is impossible. He must employ an agent or
steward, and go and live at Paris or Brighton, out of sight
and hearing of those whose misfortunes might disturb
his peace of mind ; — or put his money affairs entirely in
the hands of a solicitor. That is a good way to stifle con-
science.

Money entails duties. How shall we get the money and
forget the duties ? Voila the great problem ! . . . But
we cannot forget the duties. They cark unseen.

He has lent out his money on mortgage. Horrid word
that " mortgage ! " — " foreclosure," too ! — sounds like
clutching somebody by the throat ! Best not go and see
the party who is mortgaged; — might be some sad tale
come out. Do it through a solicitor, too, and it will be all
right.

Thus the unfortunate man of whom I have spoken finds
that, turn where he may, the whole of his life — his external
life — rests on falsehood. And I would ask you, reader,
especially well-to-do and dividend-drawing reader, is this —
this picture of the ordinary life of English gentility — your
Ideal of life ? or is it not ? For if it is do not be ashamed
of it, but please look it straight in the face and understand
exactly what it means : but if it is not, then come out of it !
It may take you years to get out ; certainly you will not
shake yourself free in a week, or a month, or many months,
but still — Come out !

lo England's ideal.

And surely the whole state of society which is founded on
this Ideal, however wholesome or fruitful it may have once
been, has in these latter days (whether we see it or not)
become quite decayed and barren and corrupt. It is no
good disguising the fact ; surely much better is it that it
should be exposed and acknowledged. Of those who are
involved in this state of society we need think no evil.
They are our brothers and sisters, as well as the rest ; and
oftentimes, consciously or unconsciously, are suffering,
caught in its toils.

Why to-day are there thousands and thousands through-
out these classes who are weary, depressed, miserable, who
discern no object to live for ; who keep wondering whether
life is worth living, and writing weary dreary articles in
magazines on that subject ? Who keep wandering from the
smoking-room of the club into Piccadilly and the park, and
from the park into picture galleries and theatres ; who go
and " stay *' with friends in order to get away from their own
surroundings, and seek " change of air," if by any means
that may bring with it a change of interest of life ? Why,
indeed ? Except because the human heart (to its eternal
glory) cannot subsist on lies ; because — whether they know
it or not — the deepest truest instincts of their nature are
belied, falsified at every turn of their actual lives : and
therefore they are miserable, therefore they seek something
else, they know not clearly what.

If, looking on England, I have thought that it is time
this Thing should come to an end, because of the poverty-
stricken despairing multitudes who are yearly sacrificed for
the maintenance of it, and (as many a workman has said to
me) are put to a slow death that it may be kept going, I
have at other times thought that, even more for the sake of
those who ride in the Juggernaut car itself, to terminate
the hydra-headed and manifold misery which lurks deep

ENGLANiyS IDEAL. II

down behind their decorous exteriors and well-appointed
surroundings, should it be finally abolished.

Anyhow, it must go. The hour of its condemnation has
struck. And not only the false thing. I speak to you,
working men and women of England, that you should no
longer look to the ideal which creates this Thing — that you
should no longer look forward to a day when you shall turn
your back on your brothers and sisters, and smooth back
white and faultless wrist-bands — living on their labor ! but
that you shall look to the new Ideal, the ideal of social
brotherhood, and of honesty, which, as surely as the sun
rises in the morning, shall shortly rise on our suffering and
sorrowing country.

But I think I hear some civilisee say, " Your theories are
all very well, and all about honesty and that sort of thing,
but it is all quite impracticable. Why, if 1 were only to
consume an equal value to that which I create, I should
never get on at all. Let alone cigars and horses and the
like, but how about my wife and family ? I don't see how
I could possibly keep up appearances^ and if I were to let
my position go, all my usefulness (details not given) would
go with it. Besides, I really don't see how a man can
create enough for all his daily wants. Of course, as you
say, there must be thousands and millions who are obliged
to do so, and more (in order to support us\ but how the
deuce they live I cannot imagine — and they must have to
work awfully hard. But I suppose it is their business to
support us, and I don't see how civilisation would get on
without them, and in return of course we keep them in
order, you know, and give them lots of good advice I "

To all which I reply, " Doubtless there is something
very appalling in the prospect of actually maintaining one-

I

12 England's ideal.

self — but I sincerely believe that it is possible. Besides,
would not you yourself think it very interesting just to try ;
if only to see what you would dispense with if you had to
do the labor connected with it — or its equivalent ? If you
had to cook your own dinner, for instance ? "

** By Jove ! I believe one would do without a lot of
sauces and side dishes ! "

" Or if you had to do a week's hard work merely to get a
new coat "

" Of course I should make the old one do — only it would
become so beastly unfashionable."

That is about it. There are such a lot of things which
we could do without — which we really don't want — only, and
but . . . !

And rather than sacrifice these beloved onlies and buts,
ratlier than snip off a few wants, or cut a sorry figure before
friends, we rush on with the great crowd which jams and
jostles through the gateway of Greed over the bodies of
those who have fallen in the struggle. And we enjoy no
rest, and our hours of Idleness, when they come, are not
delightful as they should be. For they are not free and
tuneful like the Idleness of a ploughboy or a lark, but they
are clouded with the spectral undefined remembrance of
those at the price of whose blood they have been bought.
As to the difficulty of maintaining oneself, listen to this,
please ; and read it slowly : " For more than five years I
maintained myself thus solely by the labor of my hands ;
and I found that by working about six weeks in a year I
could meet all the expenses of living."

Who was it wrote these extraordinary words ?
It has for some time been one of the serious problems of
Political Economy to know how much labor is really re-
quired to furnish a man with ordinary necessaries. The
proportion between labor and its reward has been lost

England's ideal. 13

sight of amid the complexities of modem Hfe ; and we only
know for certain that the ordinary wages of manual labor
represent very much less than the value actually created.

Fortunately for us, however, about forty years ago a man
thoroughly tired of wading through the bogs of modern
social life had the pluck to land himself on the dry ground
of actual necessity. He squatted on a small piece of land
in New England, built himself a httle hut, produced the
main articles of his own food, hired himself out now and
then for a little ready money, and has recorded for us, as
above, the results of his experience. Moreover, to leave no
doubt as to his meaning, he adds, " The whole of my
winters, as well as most of my summers, I had free and clear
for study." (He was an author and naturalist.)

The name of this man was Henry Thoreau. His book
" Walden " (and anyone can obtain it now*) gives the
details of the experiment by which he proved that a man
can actually maintain himself and have abundant leisure
besides ! And this, too, under circumstances of consider-
able disadvantage ; for Thoreau isolated himself to a great
extent from the co-operation of his fellows, and had to con-
tend single-handed with Nature in the midst of the woods,
where his crops were sadly at the mercy of wild creatures.
It is true, as I have said, that he had built himself a hut,
and had two or three acres of land to start with ; but what
a margin does his six weeks in a year leave for critical sub-
tractions 1

If anyone, however, doubts the truth of the general state-
ment contained in the last paragraph, his doubt must surely
be removed by a study of the conditions of life in England
in the fifteenth century. At that time, between the fall of
the feudal barons and the rise of the capitalists and land-
lords, there was an interval during which the workers

* Camelot Classics : W. Scott, London. x8S6. Price is.

I

14 ENGLAND'S IDEAL.

actually got something like their due, and were not robbed
to any great extent by the classes above them. Thorold
Rogers, in his " Work and Wages," gives the wages of an
unskilled town laborer at 6d. a day in the 15th century,
while the price of a sheep at that time was 2 s. Noiv the
proportions are 3s. to 50s. Four centuries ago the laborer
could have bought the sheep with four days' work ; now he
requires the toil of sixteen or seventeen days. Similarly
with the price of an ox, which was then 20s. Even bread
he could earn with less work then than now. Why is this ?
Surely our country is not at present so overgrazed and cul-
tivated as to increase the difficulty of raising beasts and
crops (on the contrary, it is half-deserted and under-
cultivated) ; nor, certainly, did the laborer in the fifteenth
century receive more than he might be said to have created
by his labor. Why then does the laborer to-day not get
any thing like that reward ? The reason is obvious. His
labor is as fruitful as ever, but the greater part of its pro-
duce — its reward — is taken from him.

As fruitful as ever ? — far more fruitful than ever ; for we
have taken no account of the vast evolutions of machinery.
What that reward would be, under our greatly-increased
powers of production — if it were only righteously distributed
— we may leave to be imagined.

As to Thoreau, the real truth about him is that he was a
thorough economist. He reduced life to its simplest terms,
and having, so to speak, labor in his right hand and its
reward in his left, he had no difficulty in seeing what was
worth laboring for and what was not, and no hesitation in
discarding things that he did not think worth the time or
trouble of production.

And I believe myself that the reason why he could so
easily bring himself to do without these things, and thus
became free — " presented with the freedom " of nature and

England's ideal. 15

of life — ^was that he was a thoroughly educated man in the
true sense of the word.

It seems to be an accepted idea nowadays that the better
educated anyone is the more he must require. " A plough-
man can do on so much a year, but an educated man — O
quite impossible ! "

Allow me to say that I regard this idea as entirely false.
First of all, if it were true, what a dismal prospect it would
open out to us 1 The more educated we became the more
we should require for our support, the worse bondage we
should be in to material things. We should have to work
continually harder and harder to keep pace with our wants,
or else to trench more and more on the labor of others ;
at each step the more complicated would the problem of
existence become.

But it is entirely untrue. Education does not turn a man
into a creature of blind wants, a prey to ever fresh thirsts
and desires — it brings him into relation with the world around
him. It enables a man to derive pleasure and to draw
sustenance from a thousand common things, which bring
neither joy nor nourishment to his more enclosed and
imprisoned brother. The one can beguile an hour any-
where. In the field, in the street, in the workshop, he sees
a thousand things of interest. The other is bored, he must
have a toy — a glass of beer or a box at the opera — but these
things cost money.

Besides, the educated man, if truly educated, has surely
more resources of skilful labor to fall back upon — he need
not fear about the future. The other may do well to
accumulate a little fund against a rainy day.

It is only to education commonly so-called — the false
education — that these libels apply. I admit that to the
current education of the well-to-do they do apply, but that
it is only or mainly a cheap-jack education, an education in

1 6 England's ideal.

glib phrases, grammar, and the art of keeping up appear-
ances, and has little to do with bringing anyone into relation
with the real world around him — the real world of humanity,
of honest daily Life, of the majesty of Nature, and the
wonderful questions and answers of the soul, which out of
these are whispered on everyone who fairly faces .them.

Let us then have courage. There is an ideal before us,
an ideal of Honest Life — which is attainable, not very
difficult of attainment, and which true education will help
us to attain to, not lead us astray from.

A man -may if he likes try the experiment of Thoreau,
and restrict himself to the merest necessaries of life — so as
to see how much labor it really requires to live.* Starting
from that zero point, he may add to his luxuries and to his
labors as he thinks fit. How far he travels along that
double line will of course depend upon temperament.
Thoreau, as I have said, made a specialty of economy.
One day he picked up a curiosity and kept it on his shelf for
a time ; but soon finding that it required dusting he threw
it out of the window ! It did not pay for its keep. Thoreau
preferred leisure to ornaments ; other people may prefer
ornaments to leisure. There is of course no prejudice —
all characters, temperaments, and idiosyncrasies are welcome
and thrice welcome. The only condition is that you must
not expect to have the ornaments and the idleness both.
If you choose to live in a room full of ornaments no one
can make the slightest possible objection ; but you must not
expect Society (in the form of your maidservant) to dust
them for you, unless you do something useful for Society in
return. (I need not at this time of day say that giving
Money is not equivalent to "doing something useful" —
unless you have fairly earned the money ; then it is.)

* It must be remerabered, however, that if anyone under present conditions of
society tried this experiment as a wage-laborer, he would be badly handicapped ,
as he would not receive anything like the reward of his labor.

ENGLAND S IDEAL. 1 7

Let US have courage. There is ample room within this
ideal of Honest Life for all human talent, ingenuity, diver-
gency of thought and temperament. It is not a narrow
cramped ideal. How can it be ? — for it alone contains in it
the possibility of human brotherhood. But I warn you :
it is not compatible with that other ideal of Worldly Gen-
tility. I do not say this lightly. I know what it is for any-
one to have to abandon the forms in which he has been
brought up ; nor do I wish to throw discredit on any one
class, for I know that this ideal permeates more or less the
greater part of the nation to-day. But the hour demands .
absolute fidelity. There is no time now for temporising.
England stands on the brink of a crisis in which no wealth,
no armaments, no diplomacy will save her — only an awaken-
ing of the National Conscience. If this comes she will
live — if it comes not ♦ * ♦ ?

The canker of effete gentility has eaten into the heart
of this nation. Its noble men and women are turned into
toy ladies and gentlemen ; the eternal dignity of (voluntary)
Poverty and Simplicity has been forgotten in an unworthy
scramble for easy chairs. Justice and Honesty have got
themselves melted away into a miowling and watery philan-
thropy; the rule of honor between master and servant,
and servant and master, between debtor and creditor, and
buyer and seller, has been turned into a rule of dishonor,
concealment, insincere patronage, and sharp bargains ; and
England lies done to death by her children who should
have loved her.

As for you, working men and working women of England

— in whom now, if anywhere, the hope of England lies —

I appeal to you at any rate to cease from this ideal, I

appeal to you to cease your part in this gentility business —

to cease respecting people because they wear fine clothes

and ornaments, and because they live in grand houses.
c

iS England's ideal.

You know you do these things, or pretend to do them, and
to do either is foolish. We have had ducking and forelock-
pulling enough. It is time for you to assert the dignity of
human labor. I do not object to a man saying " sir " to
his equal, or to an elder, but I do object to his saying "sir "
to broadcloth or to a balance at the bank. Why don't
you say " yes " and have done with it ? Remember that you,
too, have to learn the lesson of honesty. You know that
in your heart of hearts you despise this nonsense ; you know
that when the " gentleman's " back is turned you take off
his fancy airs, and mimic his incapable importances, or
launch out into bitter abuse of one who you think has
wronged you. Would it not be worthier^ if you have these
differences, not to conceal them, but for the sake of your
own self-respect to face them out firmly and candidly ?

The re-birth of England cannot come without sacrifices
from you, too. On the contrary, whatever is done, you will
have to do the greater part of it. You will often have to
incur the charge of disrespect ; you will have to risk, and to
lose, situations ; you will have to bear ridicule, and —
perhaps — arms ; Anarchists, Socialists, Communists, you will
hear yourselves called. But what would you have ? It is
no good preaching Democracy with your mouths, if you are
going to stand all the while and prop with your shoulders
the rotten timbers of Feudalism — of which, riddled as
they have been during three centuries by the maggots of
Usury, we need say no worse than that it is time they
should fall.

I say from this day you must set to work yourselves in
word thought and deed to root out this genteel dummy —
this hairdresser's Ideal of Humanity — and to establish your-
selves (where you stand) upon the broad and sacred ground
of human labor. As long as you continue to send men to
Parliament because they ride in carriages, or cannot have a

ENGLAND'S IDEAL. 1 9

meeting without asking a " squire," whom you secretly
make fun of, to take the chair, or must have clergymen and
baronets patrons of your benefit clubs — so long are you
false to your natural instincts, and to your own great
destinies.

Be arrogant rather than humble, rash rather than stupidly
contented ; but, best of all, be firm, helpful towards each
other, forgetful of differences, scrupulously honest in your-
selves, and charitable even to your enemies, but determined
that nothing shall move you from the purpose you have set
before you — the righteous distribution in society of the
fruits of your own and other men's labor, the returii to
Honesty as the sole possible basis of national life and
national safety, and the redemption of England from the
curse which rests upon her.

MODERN MONEY-LENDING,

AND THB

MEANING OF DIVIDENDS.

[

" If I lend jCioo, and for it covenant to receive ;CioS* or any other sum greater
than was the sum I did lend, this is that that we cal* usury ; such a kind of bar<
gaining as no good man, or godly roan, ever used."— -iSf/. Jewell,

** Chi fila ha una camiccia, e chi noo iila ne ha due."

The practice of Money-lending is now carried out on
such an enormous scale, and by such a large class of society,
and is attended by certain evils so widespread and disas
trous, that it has become fairly necessary to look the pro-
blem in the face ; and whatever may be the conclusion
arrived at, I shall consider the purpose of this paper ful-
filled if it causes the reader (and myself) to confront the
question and to see that it requires solution.

There has always been a disagreeable odor about this
trade. The very word Usury has unpleasant associations
with it . How is it then that we who reprobate the money-
lending Jew of mediaeval Europe and the marwari whose
loans press so heavily to-day upon the peasant of India, are
light-hearted enough to lend our money out at interest
without a qualm, and (some of us) to make our entire sub-
sistence on the gains so got from other people ?

Is it that the Shylock and the marwari are so distant
from us that we do not perceive our relationship to them ?

" No,'* says someone, " the reason is that they practised
and practise Usury ; we only reap Interest. To live on the
20

MODERN MONEY-LENDING. 21

gains of other people becomes criminal when you depass a
certain point."

What then is that point ? Where is that line to be drawn
which divides legitimate Interest from Usury? Let us
remember that the word Usury simply indicates that the
person who lends the money expects a reward for the use of
it; and the word Interest indicates that the person who
lends the money is interested in, or a party to, the concern
from which the gain is expected to be made. There is
nothing in the original signification of the two words to
show one proceeding as more legitimate than the other.

Certainly it is quite conceivable that a high rate of In-
terest might be grossly unfair, and a low rate only just and
equitable j but this distinction of degree can hardly be the
ground of oicr action, since there is nothing that we usually
covet more or congratulate ourselves more upon than the
obtaining of a high rate of interest for our money.

No — the reason, it seems to me, why we carry on our
modern money-lending business without qualms lies simply
in the fact that the practice is universal round us. Every
body (which in the " society " signification of the word
means everyone who does not work with his hands) does it.
Custom sanctions it ; " the law allows it." And to most
people involved in the practice it naturally never occurs to
consider its rightfulness or wrongfulness at all.

But this does not make it the less incumbent on us —
once we have looked into the matter— to get to the roots of
it. Rather more. Let us grub at it then.

The fundamental principle of social life and just living
can never, it seems to me, be too often brought forward.
For some reason or other it is only too often liable to be
obscured. It is this — that the existence and well-being of
a people are secured by their collective labor, and that
only by taking his part in that labor can each man have a

2 2 MODERN MONEY-LENDING,

right to the advantages which flow from it. Political Eco-
nomy always begins with an island ! At first all are workers,
and by a few hours' work daily from each man sufficient of
the necessaries and adornments even of life are produced
(from the natural resources of the island) to maintain every
one in comfort. After a time it is found that the state of
affairs has changed. Half the population is now living in
idleness — or at most engaged in occupations whose benefit
to the community is very remote and dubious. The other
half is working very hard — twice as many hours a day in
fact as before — as it must do to keep things up to the
former level.

This is a sad change for the worse. One half of the
community is living in degrading slavery, has more work to
do than can be done without injury and the blunting of
noble powers. The other half is living in (far more)
degrading dependence, and is suffering that injury to its
soul which comes and must come from all meanness and
selfishness.

This second state of affairs on the island is what we
notice on our own Island to-day and in modern social life
at large. The causes which have led up to it and the means
by which it is kept going are manifold. The use of money
and of capital, hereditary acquirements, monopoly of land,
customs and laws now grown false and harmful, are some
of the engines by which one part of the community retains
its power over the other part. The problem of the little
island is complicated, too, when we come to consider the
big Island, by such matters as foreign trade, taxes, misun-
derstandings as to the nature of money, and all the cog-
wheels big and little of social life — but essentially it is the
same. These things only serve to disguise the fact that one
class is living on the labor of another \ they do not in any
way alter the fact.

s

ANJD THE MEANING OF DIVIDENDS. 2$

Let US look at the matter again. I have said that the
money-lending classes are in our modern society enor-
mously large. They are also enormously on the increase.
It can hardly be otherwise. Let us suppose that in
some society conducted on our present system one man
(and only one at first) accumulates enough money to
bring him in a substantial income — say ;^5oo a year. Then
that man is safe. He has escaped from the labor of feed-
ing himself and children, and may fold his arms and amuse
himself as he likes — he has got on the dry land beyond the
flood — and this in perpetuity practically ; for he may live as
long as he can and then transmit the right to those who
come after him. He is safe, and except by his own impru-
dence need never again join the throng of those who toil
and spin. Presently another man accumulates the desired
amount. He also " retires," and is safe. Then a third and
fourth. Then hundreds and thousands, then a considerable
portion of the whole nation — where shall we stop ? All the
lootsteps (with but few exceptions) point the same way.
Few, who by their own exertions or those of their fathers and
grandfathers have reached the desired haven, are likely to
quit it again. The number musf go on increasing — yet it
is impossible for a whole nation to retire and suck its
thumb ! What is happening ? This is happening — a vast
and ever vaster proportion of the nation is getting (by force
of existing social rights and machinery) to live on the
labor of the rest. Every day, of those who are harnessed
to the car of national life and prosperity, one or another by
dint of extra forethought, prudence, miserliness, cunning, or
whatever it may be, gets an advantage over the rest, leaves
them, jumps tnsi^e the car, and thenceforth, instead of
drawing is drawn. The end is only too obvious. It is a
redtictio ad absutdum of national life. It ifi breakdown^
smash up —and the car left in the ditch.

24 MODERN MONEY-LENDING,

These are serious charges to bring against the practice of
money-lending as carried on in modern society. Let us
look at the other side of the question.

I have ;£^5oo which I have saved out of the products of
my own labor — and which I have no immediate use for.
My neighbor offers me 5 per cent, per annum for the use of
the sum, for a given period. Have I not a perfect right to ac-
cept his offer ? Should I not be a perfect fool if I refused it ?

Yes (in answer to the firs: question — the answer to the
second will perhaps appear later on) I have a perfect (legal)
right to accept his offer. On this view Interest is a grati-
tude. It is presumably a payment made by the borrower
in return for some advantage he derives from the money
lent. It does not matter to me in a sense how he employs
the money. He may merely squander it for his own amuse-
ment, or he may employ it as capital to bring him a profit.
In either case he gives me what I consider sufficient security
for its repayment, and if he offers me 5 per cent, interest
besides it is because the advantage is worth that to him ;
and I have a perfect right to accept it.

Besides, am I not by lending this money actually in the
second case benefiting society ? Do I not put capital into
the hands of a man who is willing and able to employ it,
and thus actually encourage and further production ? Nay
more, I may go further, and waiving my request for a secu-
rity may subscribe my funds directly to his concern, taking
the risk and sharing some of the profits — may become a
shareholder in fact. In doing this do I not benefit my
country, and may I not pocket my returns with a glow of
substantial and generous satisfaction? *

* Under the term Money-lenders, I thus include both Bond and Shareholders —
receivers of Interest and sharers of Profits. I am aware that current Politica
Economy draws a considerable distinction between these two classes. But though
for scientific purposes such a distinction may be useful, yet practically, and as Uir
as regards national advantage or social morality, I confess I do not sec that it is
of much importance.

\

AND THE MEANING OF DIVIDENDS. 2$

Yes, I believe that it is possible that in the ways men-
tioned I Piay be useful to society ; and it seems to me
very probable that, for instance, the Jew money-lender of
the 13th and 14th centuries in England was a very useful
member of society. At that time, when capital was scarce,
and for the budding demands of commerce private indi-
viduals could often not supply sufficient funds, his services
may have been indispensable ; and if he sometimes took
undue advantage of his position, plentiful laws restrained
him.

How then can it be that the gains of the modern money-
lender, whether bond or share-holder, if just, should lead to
such disastrous conclusions as I have pointed out ? How
can we reconcile the rightfulness of interest with the im-
morahty of a life of idleness, and the meanness of a vast
class supported by the excessive and exhausting labor of
the mass of the people ?

Is it possible that a practice which is wholesome and
useful to society in a moderate or small degree may become
highly dangerous when carried out on a large scale ; that
the Jew money-lender in consideration of his services could
in his time really be tolerated, but that the shareholder has
become an insupportable Old Man of the Sea who must be
torn off and got rid of at all costs ? Quite possible, I
think ; though I will not by any means say that this is the
conclusion of the whole matter. Let us grub at it again.

Is it still not obvious that the poverty of the mass of the
people stands in direct relationship to the wealth of the
money-lending classes, that they are the two opposite sides
or faces, in fact, of the same thing? Has that original
illustration about the people on the Island grown dim by
reason of some considerations by the way which have been
introduced ? Let it stand out clear again. It cannot be
got over.

26 MODERN MONEY-LENDING,

Where does Interest come from ? Have you ever thought
of that ?

If I lend £soo to a man, he may, as I have said, either
squander it away or invest it as capital to bring him in a
profit. The first case need not detain us long ; it is in the
main an exceptional case. If the borrower squanders my
money, I shall probably have to sell him up to repay myself
capital and interest; I shall not lend to him again, and
that game soon comes to an end. The money-lending
which constitutes the great problem of modern society is
that which is connected in some way or other with capital.
I lend my ;£^5oo to a man who employs it as capital in
some concern, and the interest which I receive comes out
of the profits of that concern.

But where does it come from ? Who pays it ? How does
the capitalist make his profit ?

The capitalist buys raw material ; he employs labor to
work it up into a finished article ; and he sells the finished
article. These are the three processes of his business, and
in one (or more) of these processes he must get more than
he gives — otherwise he can make no profit. That is quite
clear, I think. He is a clothier. He buys cloth, employs
men and women to cut and stitch it, and sells coats. The
coat contains so much cloth and so much added labor
(including the labor necessary to replace the wear and
tear of the sewing machines). And the value of the coat
is equal to the value of the cloth plus the value of the
labor put into it.

Where does his profit come from ? Not in the buying
and selling of the mere cloth obviously. For he buys at
the market price and must in the long run sell at the same.
The profit comes to him in the buying and selling of the
labor which he employs on the coat. How is that ? It is
not difficult to see. He gives his young women two

AND THE MEANING OF DIVIDENDS. 27

shillings (generally less) for their day's work at the sewing
machines. But the labor they put into the cloth is worth
far more than two shillings ; and the extra value the Capita-
list gets in the market for his coat (above the value of the
cloth out of which it is made) is the actual value of the
labor put into it, not the value of the wretched wage which
he gives. Thus it is that he gets more than he gives.

The process is simple enough. An article with say nine
hours'— a whole day's — labor in it should fetch on the
market an equivalent of nine hours' labor, e.g,y such an
amount of coin as would on the average cost nine hours
labor in its production. This goes to the Capitalist*
But does anyone for a moment suppose that the two
shillings that he gives to his workwoman is the equivalent,
or anything like the equivalent, of those same nine
hours ? What, if you please, in the way of the ordinary
necessaries of life does nine hours' labor represent?
Godwin, the author of " Political Justice," calculated that
a man with ordinary labor, unhampered by the rapacity
of others, should be able in two hours daily to supply
himself with the necessaries and conveniences of life.
Bastiat, if I am not mistaken, mentions two and a half
hours. Karl Marx, whose calculations on Capital I am
following, supposes six hours' labor per diem necessary
in order that a man may provide for himself, a wife, and
two children. Of course an exact estimate on this subject
is difficult to make. So far has society got from any simple
and equitable relation between labor and its reward that
we actually do not knota how much (or how little) labor is
required for a man to support himself in health and com-
fort (see p. 1 2). But all authors agree that it is very small
compared with the nine hours' daily slavery which constitute
the beginning and the end of a modern working man's life.

* Twelve hours, with one and a half off for ntiUt* 19 tbe more usual day's work,
I believe, in this department.

28 MODERN MONEY-LENDING,

The nine hours' labor then which our sempstress or
machinist puts into the article ought to represent for her a
comfortable subsistence for several days. It represents a
bare living for one day. She ought to get say a value of
6s. for it. She receives 2s. The capitalist pockets the
difference. The wretched girl makes him a present, or has
to make him a present, of four days' work in the week.
She gets the value of her labor for two. And this is
where profits, where interest, under our present social sys-
tem, come from.

The position of women in these matters is notoriously
bad, but that of the male laborers, skilled or unskilled, is
little better. Marx calculates that the ordinary cotton
spinner makes a present to his master of three days* work
in the week. He puts six days' labor into the yarn, and
his master in selling the cotton gets the equivalent of that
six days' labor, but he only gives the spinner the money
value of three days' labour. ** Under the old system of
corvee a man was obliged to give, say one day's work in the
week, or at most two, to his feudal lord without any pay-
ment. Such a man, though he had the remaining five or
six days wholly to himself, was thought httle better than a
slave. Nor was he. English capitalists would, of all men,
subscribe largely to relieve human beings from continuing
in such a shameful and degraded position. But here at
home, we have men, women, and children, who are obliged
to give four, five, six hours a day to the capitalist for
nothing, and yet are thought free." *

Now let us take the case of a railway company (I am
interested in this as I am a shareholder myself, and should
like to see how my dividends arise).

We (the shareholders) have subscribed our funds, and —

n <<

Bngland for AH/' by H. M. Hyndman, price 6d.— An ezcelleot little book.

AND THE MEANING OF DIVIDENDS. 29

to simplify the matter — we will suppose that we have bought
over with a large portion of them the entire plant of an old
company. This then forms our capital stock ; and we can
begin running trains at once. We shall have to maintain
the permanent way and the rolling stocky and for this pur-
pose shall have to employ a large number of men, besides
purchasing materials from time to time ; and we shall have
a large staff of general servants and officials. Our chief ex-
penditure, therefore, will be in wages. And our receipts
will arise principally from the transport of goods and
passengers. How do we expect to make our profits ?
Obviously by reducing the expenditure below the receipts.

We have to transport 20 truck-loads of coal. There is a
lot of labor required. There is the labor of shunters and
signalmen, of station-masters and platelayers, of driver,
stoker, and guard ; there is the labor of those who replace
the wear and tear of the line and of the rolling stock. All
this labor and much more has to be considered. When
totted up it constitutes the labor-value of the service ren-
dered. What we expect to get in exchange for the service
is an equivalent labor-value as expressed in money — that is
to say, if we get j£^ for the service it may be supposed that
the labor necessary for the production of a piece of gold,
value ;^5, is equivalent to the labor involved in the transport
of the said 20 truck-loads of coal. This is the basis of all
just exchange. It is possible, however, that we may get
more than our labor-value. If we are secure from com-
petition or have a monopoly of any kind, we may succeed
in getting more than we give — simply because our customers
cannot get their transport done at a less price through other
channels. It is possible also that we may sometimes have
to take actually less than the labor-value of our services
rendered. How we can do this and yet make a profit we
shall see presently.

\

30 MODERN MONEY-LENDING,

The obvious -method, through all this, of securing divi-
dends is to kegp d(nvn wages,

Let us take the three cases supposed. Let us first assume
that the price we can get for our service represents exactly
the just exchange — that we receive a labor- value from our
customer exactly equal to that which we give him. How
do we make our profits ? How must we make our profits ?
Obviously by giving our own servants and workmen hss
than the labor-value of what they do for us — by giving
them wages which do not represent their labor — which are
not an equivalent for it.

Let us suppose, secondly, that the state of the market
forces us for the time being to accept firom the customer
actually less than the labor- value of the service rendered ;
then obviously we are driven to lower still further the wages
of our servants, to do them a more glaring injustice — that
is, if we can ; for on this depend our chances of a dividend.

These two cases are, I take it, by far the most common.
Lately, for instance, large bodies of signalmen working on
the Midland Railway have had their wages reduced from
2 IS. to 19s. a week ! These men are working 12 hours a*
day ; one week, nights ; another week, days ; and some
hours on Sundays— some 80 hours in all. Hardly three-
pence an hour. It is impossible to pretend that these men
are paid for their work, but it is the balance of their unpaid
labor which creates what is called the dividend ; and that
is what makes the directors so anxious to reduce the wage.*
I can buy in the street six boxes of matches for a penny.

* Their consideration for the workers may be judged by the following: —
Lately the Midland Railway's receipts (owing to bad trade) fell off by £50,0(X) in
one half-year* If this had been economised out of dividend, the dividend for the
half-year would have been decreased by one twentieth part. But rather than
that the shareholders should bear so tnfljng a loss, it was resolved to recoup the
turn out ot wages ; and this involved the discharge of some hundreds of servants,
and the reduction of the wages of others in t he shameful manner shown above.
And yet the Midland Railway is worked as liberally as any Railway in the United
Kingdom. See note, p. 32.

AND THE MEANING Of DIVIDENDS. 3 1

The capitalist must sell them at considerably less than that
— say nine boxes for a penny. It is difficult for me to
believe that the labor-value involved in the making of nine
boxes of matches is not more than a penny. If so, this is
a case in which the capitalist gets actually less value from
the customer than he gives. What then must he give to his
own workmen ? This is a question which weighs upon me
when I buy those six boxes. It is not a pleasant one ; and
I feel no desire any longer to glory in their cheapness.

To return to my railway. The third case remains uncon-
sidered, in which I succeed in getting from my customer
(for one reason or another) more than the value of the service
rendered. When this happens I certainly can pay my
servants and workmen the full value of their labor, and yet
have a margin for my own profit. And it would be useless
to deny that this sometimes takes place. Workmen under
the present system and with existing fluctuations in trade
sometimes get in wages as much as represents the full
value of their labor. But this is always an exceptional
condition of affairs and does not last long. In such a case
where do the profits of capital come from 1 If I charge my
passenger for transporting him from Dover to London the
full value of one man's labor for a day, and the human
labor actually involved in the transport (reckoning up
everything) has been only equal to one man's labor for
three-quarters of a day — and I pay my servants justly for
that — then I gain my profits clearly out of the passenger,
I gain a quarter-day's labor from hira— that is, I cause him
(or if he does not work himself, whoever works for him) to
work a whole day for a service which only costs me (or my
representatives) the labor of three-quarters of a day.

Thus, once more, it appears that my profits come, and
must come, from the labor of others. They arise, and can
only arise, from the feet th»t some portion of the labor

32 MODERN MONEY-LENDING,

connected with my business goes unremunerated. The
proper remuneration of that portion I pocket for myself,
and that is how my dividends arise.*

That labor is the proper basis of exchangeable value is
now assumed, 1 believe, by all Political Economists ; that
it is the source of all that is generally termed " Wealth ** is
obvious. It therefore needs no detailed argument to prove
that if a class lives without labor, if it obtains wealth with-
out working for it — it must be appropriating the labor of
others, and the wealth that rightfully belongs to them.
And this is the case, I fear, of the shareholder and of that
vast class in this nation who live on interest and dividends.

But, it may well be asked, if this appropriation is unjust,
why does the worker submit to it ? Why does he allow a
portion, and often a large portion, of his daily labor to go
unremunerated ?

The answer is : Because he cannot help himself. He sees
and feels that it is unjust, but he is caught in the jaws of a
vice and cannot move.

The matter lies in a nutshell. If the worker could employ
himself, be his own Capitalist, then (and then only) could
he get the full remuneration of his labor, for he would have
no idle person to support in addition to himself and family.
But in the existing state of affairs he cannot become his
own Capitalist. Why? Because, of the two oudets of
Capital — agriculture and industrial production — one is
barred by our land system, the other by machinery.

* Any railway company's report will illustrate these remarks. I quote the follow-
ing figures from the accounts of the North-Eastern for the latter part of 1884. The
total revenue for that half-year was £3,299,000. This enormous sum-was expended
as follows :— Wages (inclnding salaries of officials), £1,078,000; purchase of
materials, law costs, taxes, &c., £889,000; and the balance, £1,531,000, went
almost entirely to the bond and share holders I That is, roughly speaking, one
million sterling went to the workers who carried on the line, and one million and
a half to the idlers who claimed interest on their capital ; or, in other words, out
of every ten hours that the signalman, engine-driver, or other servant or official
worked, he gave six hours for the benefit of the share and bond holder, and only
had four for himself. And this is about an avei^e case. Taking the railways of
the United Kiogdom as a whole, we find that £33j000,000 a year is paid as interest
on Capital out of this industry alone !

AND THE MEANING OF DIVIDENDS. 33

In fact, if our workman, having saved up a little capital ^
proposes to buy a small piece of land and support himself
upon it by his own labor, and that of his family — he finds
himself at the very outset met by the fact that he can hardly
find such a piece of land to buy. The main portion of
Great Britain is in the hands of a few thousahd large owners.
The quantity of land in the market is small, it is mostly in
large and cumbrous holdings, the price is prohibitive, and
the legal expenses and complications attending the transfer
are very vexatious and costly, the result being that in his
own country the workman finds himself an exile, without a
foot of soil which he can call his own, and unable to exert
the labor which he longs to put into the ground, without
hiring himself out, becoming a slave, a dependent, and
giving half the profits of his toil to someone else.

If, on the other hand, he desires to embark his small
savings in some form of industrial production, and to
employ himself in that way, he finds that machinery forbids.
For without machinery he cannot hope to compete in the
market. And to acquire machinery and all that goes with
it, he must lay out large sums of money, and be a large
Capitalist at once.

Thus, absolutely unable on the present system to employ
himself, the workman is thrown on the market — there to
sell his labor to the Capitalist for what he can get.

Now we begin to perceive the operation of those two
deities, worshiped by Commercial Philosophers — Supply
and Demand. Think for a moment of the vast floating
fluctuating tramping toiling population that does the
manual work of England to-day. "In the 15th century a
landless houseless family was almost unknown." What
material for reflection lies in these words ! Think of the
vast patient toiling population of to-day, homeless, tramping
from place to place, thrice blessed when it can get into
D

34 MODERN MONEY-LENDING,

some squalid corner of workshop or factory and be allowed
to grind one eternal and monotonous operation for nine
hours a day \ remember that this population is so situated
that it cannot employ itself; and then think of the capitalist
class rolling through the streets in its carriages, monopolis-
ing the land and the instruments of production — at whose
feet this working population has to kneel and beg for
employment. Is it not a mockery to talk of Supply and
Demand — or if not a mockery, are these two words so to
rule us that all charity and human pity, nay, that all honesty
and the demands of divine justice itself are to be set aside
in their favor ? The Demand is a demand for bread, the
Supply — well, what is the supply ? What is it as a matter
of fact, what is it likely to be, from a class in power to a
class that is forced to come and crouch at its feet ? What
has it been all the world over from the tyrant to the
slave ? A supply, alas ! of insults and mockery, of chas-
tisement and tears, and a crown of thorns placed upon
the brow of despised and rejected Humanity.

The supply (in wages) is and obviously must be under
the present system just sufficient to keep the laborer going —
and, in the long run, no more. I think practically all
political economists admit this. That whatever fluctuations
there may be owing to the state of trade, whatever great
accessions in the production of wealth owing to new and
ever new mechanical inventions, in the end the wages of
the workmen do tend and must under the capitalist system
tend ever downwards to that minimum which just admits
of the support of the workman and the perpetuation of his
race. Capital, in fact, is limited in the hands of the few, and
Labor is at the mercy of these few as to whether it shall
be employed or not. The country may be full of Labor
desiring to be employed, but if the capitalists do not see a
way of turning it to their profit it remains unemployed.

AND THE MEANIKC OF DIVIDENDS. 35

The object of all production, in fact, is not the providing
for the people or the supply of the wants of the nation —
but the profit of a small class. And if the small class is not
profited the nation may starve ! That is the long and short
of it.

Nothing can illustrate this better than England at the
present time. The land holds thousands of men, honest
excellent workmen, who hate idleness and desire work.
Can anyone doubt that England would be a richer happier
country if they were employed ? If those men were only
turned out on the farm lands now in every county running
to thistles and docks — there to support themselves by their
own labor — the country would by that alone be millions
of pounds richer. Yet these men roam the roads and with
hungry eyes look over the hedges at fields all going to
waste, at badly drained, uncared for, half-cultivated lands
— in vain —because, forsooth ! the capitalist and landlord
classes do not find it suit their pockets to employ them.
The same remark applies to industrial production. It is
useless to say that there is not ample work for the Industrial
classes of England to do — work which would and must be
profitable to themselves and the nation. The real question
is whether it suits the capitalist classes to let them do it.
But Lord Broadacre and Mr. Moneybag find they can get
lo per cent, for their money in Mexican and Brazilian
bonds, and it suits them very well to let their capital go out
of the country- — suits ihent better perhaps than employing
the starving laborers in it. It matters not to them^it
matters not to the great shareholding, dividend-drawing,
and rent-receiving classes of this country what the condition
is of the laboring masses from whom they draw their wealth.
As a matter of fact they know little or nnthin;; about it. I
believe that thousands sndjbouaands out of these classes
would, if th^ only knew^^BHB^gc»se~if they could

36 MODERN MONEY-LENDING,

only realise the monotony and depression of the Hfe of the
mechanical wage-worker, the hopelessness of it, the bitter
sense of wrong as he is driven to beg for employment from
door to door — if they could only for one moment with the
keen eye of justice see the honest relation between
themselves, and this man who stands without in the
cold — see him as the true man, and themselves as
depend«nts — wcidd^ I say, if not out of piiy out of
very pride abandon their mode of life and rest no more
till they had made some reparation. But for the most part,
lapped in luxury and ease from their childhood onwards,
ignorant of the real facts of life, nursed among absurd and
impossible ideals, and flattered by class views and interests,
living in houses and quarters far away from the haunts of
labor, and knowing nothing of the great heart of the
People with all its aspirations and sufferings, they have no
chance to see the thing in its broad true light, nor to under-
stand the real nature of the position in which they are
placed.*

Let me here pause to resume. In considering the
morality of Interest I agreed that if one should offer me 5
per cent, interest for the use of my ;^5oo I should have a
perfect right to accept it. How far do I feel my conclusion
now modified by the foregoing investigations ? A perfect
/f^^/ right. Yes, that under the present conditions of society
I certainly have. But what sort of right beyond that ? what
sort of human or moral right ?

I confess that if the Laborer from whose overplus of

* That the industrial classes themselves, however, understand it, and feel that
it must cr>me to an end, let the following portions of a letter from an artixan, a
wir.-woiker, prove. Writinjr of a book, he sa>s : *' I glory in its onslaught on
Modern Gentility and all its ignobilities and fettered uselessness. I know iu
author would have them break theii fetters and give them librrty. His strong
language is most needful to get them to think at all on this subject, they live in
such a flattered fool's-paradise with such an absence of self-ieliance. How unlike
the early Greeks ! or even the common English people. . . . This state of
society has most certainly eutlWed its usefulneu, and must di* and England live.**

AND THE MEANING OF DIVIDENDS. 37

work my Interest comes were himself in a substantial and
flourishing condition, if for instance as in the 15th century
he were himself a small landholder, and employer of his
own right arm, then, though I might have compunctions, I
should still feel that he had a choice in the matter — that he
was really at liberty to bargain with me on equal terms, and
to pay me the overplus of his labor or withhold it as he
might think fit. But as the circumstances are — seeing that
the Laborer has no choice, that I practically have him by
the throat, and that he must either pay me or die, I fear it
is a little out of place to talk of any kind of right at all —
except that which comes of force.

Think once more of our island. There are two parties
on it. One party possesses all the land (best not inquire
how it got it !) and all the tools and implements of industry ;
the other party possesses nothing. The second party has
to do all the labor. Of the fruits of its labor just enough
is awarded to it to keep it alive and fit for work, the rest is
claimed by the first party (under the names of rent, interest,
profit, &c.) as a reward for its kindness in allowing the
laborers to use its land and tools !

Why does the second party submit to anything so absurd ?
Simply because it is the most patient, broad-backed, good-
humoured, simple, honest creature imaginable, and has
never fairly opened its eyes to see through the juggle
imposed upon it. But that flam cannot last long now.
The day of the rule of class greed and wealth is almost
at an end. The workers are waking up in England and all
over Europe to their true position. In a few, very few, years
the antagonism will be declared on both sides. Perhaps in
England the very next great crisis will bring an open de-
claration of war — if not (as may be hoped) actual conflict.

But before coming to anything so practical as a con-
sideration of what has to be done in view of this huge and

\

38 MODERN MONEY-LENDING,

impending struggle, let me meet one objection to my
general argument which just now occurs to me.

It is said that a state of society which only provides for
manual labor and the physical wants of men is disastrous
to all higher life and in every way far from desirable ; and
that to deprive men of the chance of living in " inde-
pendence " (as it is called) would be to deprive the world
of the services of many great thinkers, artists, philan-
thropists, and benefactors of the human race. Let me say
first, and in passing as it were, that if mere justice were
done to the human masses at large they would not stand in
need of so many philanthropists and benefactors I and
that injustice can never in the nature of things grow a
greater crop of human welfare and felicity than justice.
Secondly, let me say that there is nothing to prevent
society from recognising and paying the labor of the artist,
the judge, and the thinker even, — as much as it recognises
and rewards the labor of the mason and the quarryman ;
but that this would form no reason for maintaining a vast
number of people in abject uselessness and idleness besides.
Thirdly, let me say that the production of the necessaries
of Ufe is still the most important and the foundation element
of national life, and that in our present England it is both
in honor and in actual pursuit dangerously neglected in
favor of the innumerable fancy-work with which it is over-
laid. Fourthly, do not let us forget the manifold evils
which arise from this so-called " independence " — the waste
of life, and its good things, the ennui, unbehef, and ill-
health — do not let us forget that this " independent " class
is responsible for the creation of other classes — such as
lawyers, domestic servants, doctors — who if not idle are
themselves next to useless to the community, and therefore
a burden upon it ; and Fifthly, and most important of all,
let me remind the reader that if the capitalist class were

AND THE MEANING OF DIVIDENDS. 39

abolished and a fair share of work at the necessaries of life
done by all parties in the nation — the average work so
required would be only about three or four hours a day,
thus leaving ample time in the remaining hours for other
pursuits, and probably causing developments on the intel-
lectual and artistic sides of civilisation hitherto unpre-
cedented and undreamt of.

To proceed now with a consideration of what has to be
done in the immediate future to meet the coming changes.
The People are demanding, and will with rapidly increasing
loudness demand, that the land of this country and the
instruments of production (meaning thereby Capital) shall
be put once more into the hands of the producers. Under
various names, as Nationalisation of the land, Nationalisa-
tion of Capital, Co-operation, Socialism, &c., they will
practically demand one thing — namely, that the workers
shall directly inherit the fruits of their work, and shall not be
mulcted by secondary classes intervening between. The
capitalist classes (as a body) will resist this demand ; and
there will be more or less open war for a considerable
period, ending at last no doubt in the defeat of the
capitalists. The end cannot really I think be doubtful,
but the length of the struggle and the violence of it may
depend on a variety of causes. It seems to me in the last
degree improbable that any great proportion of the capitalist
classes will admit the justice of or yield to the demands of
the people ; on the contrary, they will organise resistance ;
and the People will organise attack. And it is only too
probable that antagonism will embitter and exaggerate
the sense of wrong on both sides. Some few, how-
ever, among the capitalist classes will discern the sub-
stantial justice of the popular claims, and will have
boldness to act up to their convictions ; and on the action
of these it piay grea|ly depend whether the struggle be

I

40 MODERN MONEY-LENDING,

ultimately referred to the arbitrament of reason or of
force.

In face of the rapidly spreading views (partly explained
above) on the nature of rent, interest, and profits, the present
attitude of the more well-meaning among the Capitalist
classes towards the People seems very inadequate and indeed
out of place. It is not patronage and kindly condescension
that are required, but mere justice. From the person who
has taken from you a large proportion of the fruits of
your labor it is not agreeable to receive small doles to keep
you from starvation. Charity organisations and unpaid
magistracies and the current philanthropic schemes indicate
a benevolent intention on the part of those who promote
them, but they also indicate an entire misconception as to
where the root of the evil lies^ and an incapability of
realising the way in which the people themselves regard
these attempts to remedy it.

On the other hand, perhaps the workers hardly realise
how difficult it is for one of the dividend-receiving classes
to extricate himself, when he finds his mistake, from the
false position into which he has unconsciously got. Trained
to no kind of manual work, perhaps to no useful work at all
(for of how little real use to the community is the greater
part of the work at present done in the select professions I),
trained perhaps to no work of any kind, useful or unuseful,
he (or she) finds it difficult to satisfy the desire now arising
for an honest and faithful life. And indeed, the whole
state of society around being dishonest and unfaithful, it is
difficult for anyone to satisfy that desire.

Yet there are certain lines along which such a person
may work with satisfaction — and which I may perhaps try
to indicate. In the first place (and perhaps this is as a rule
the best plan), remaining in that place or profession in
which they are, they may try to make their work in it en-

AND THE MEANING OF DIVIDENDS. 41

tirely honest and open, and as useful to others as possible,
especially the poor. This will of course involve losses,
monetary and otherwise, and ridicule. But nothing else
can be expected or need be wished for. In the second
place, to make this course of life feasible and to gradually
gain independence from dividends, it will be necessary to
reduce expenses greatly, and to adopt a very simple mode
of life. The current mode of life among the capitalist
people is so needlessly expensive and complex, tliat few of
them, even the more economical, realise how easily it can
be simplified, and with how much advantage to health and
happiness. But really nowadays the adornments of life, as
for instance, literature, music, art, travel even, are so cheap
that very little, after the necessaries have been provided for
is required for the satisfaction of mental wants. A great
deal of ignorance no doubt exists among so-called well to-
do people about proper food (a matter in which humble
country folk are far better instructed) and a great deal of
unnecessary expense incurred in this item ; but I have not
the least doubt — and I am not speaking at random in this
matter — that with ^i30 a year a man and a wife willing to
do a fair share of work (and both of them free from any
desire to make a pretence of grandeur — for this lies very-
much at the root of the matter) could bring up a little
family in health and happiness— all taking their part in
household hfe — and with education, culture, and refinement
equal to any in the land. But such a change as this, or in
this direction, at all generally adopted, would enormously
alter the aspect of the nation, and bring us nearer to that
ideal of social love, justice, and health from which we have
so far strayed.

I dwell on these personal reforms first, because surely to
each individual they must come first — before any more
wide-reaching sphere of usefulness can be reaclied ^^i^jM

42 MODERN MONEY-LENDING,

capitalist or shareholding sort of person who carried out
this plan of living would probably after a time find that he
(or she) had a considerable balance at the bank to dispose
of. He would thjen have to consider what to do with it.
And he would find himself much nearer than before to a
practical realisation of the advice which Jesus gave to the
young man with great possessions.

Without attempting to limit the directions in which such
a person might with his money try to benefit the mass of
the People, as in some sort of reparation for having taken it
from them, I would suggest that at present the great need
of the People (as mentioned above) is to get capital into
their own hands for the purpose of employing their own
labor. This can only be done by Co-operation, either on a
small scale, or by the community at large. Anything there-
fore which will further Co-operation, either by the founding
of productive societies, or by a dissemination of ideas on
the subject, will I think be especially useful. Furthermore,
and beyond this kind of Co-operation, something of the
nature of National Co-operation is to be aimed at. This
practically, and dropping details, means Socialism, which I
take it is simply the substitution of the rule of general
advantage for the rule of individual greed, as represented
by Capitalism. The word Socialism has to many an un-
pleasant flavor. Like every new word or idea which comes
into the world, it carries with it something repugnant and
offensive ; and those who view it from the outside take it
to mean confusion, destruction, and disorder. But those
who view it from within see that it really means order and
harmony far more than the system it is destined to replace.
Indeed, if anything, the danger of Socialism — and one that
will have to be guarded against — will be its representing too
much orderliness, and so being inimical to individual ec-
centricity and development.

AND THE MEANING OF DIVIDENDS. 43

Behind this word, and giving it authority, stands the huge
personality of Democracy, the rule of the mass of the
people — their interests rather than the interests of the
aristocratic or commercial classes. To many serious and
thoughtful folk this rule seems full of danger. To them it
appears that the working classes, whatever virtues they may
have, are essentially disorderly, turbulent, cjamorousj, and
disregardful of rights — and that therefore (as undoubtedly
would be the case if this were true) they are ai^d always
must be unfit — either directly or through representatives —
to be the practical rulers of society. I believe myself, how-
ever, that this is a complete mistake — a mistake due to
ignorance, and to hasty generalisation of those isolated
occasions when the people have hitherto forced themselves
into notice like volcanic lava through the upper crust of
society's indifference and repression. It happens to me to
have had perhaps exceptional opportunities of knowing the
various main strata of English social life — the fashionable,
the intellectual, the commercial classes, and the proletari^.
I may say I have spent several years in each stratum and
mixed freely and wellnigh exclusively in each case with
those belonging to it — and without dogmatising on the
matter, my decided opinion is that the more stable section of
the working masses is the real backbone of the nation.
My opinion is that this class (if it can be called a class) is
in sound sense, orderliness, aflfectionateness, and whole-
some instinct, moral and physical, far superior to the rest of
the nation ; that in intellect, if not equal to the detailed work
of the scientific people, it has a plain strong mastery derived
from its contact with the actual facts of life, which is most if
not more important j and that in dealing with moral and poli-
tical problems it uses a broad sense and tact which often lead
it to just conclusions when professional politicians and mora-
lists are floundering among expediencies and casuistries.

44 MODERN MONEY-LENDING.

* Of course the same old blood runs everywhere ; and in
all sections of social life, as far as I can see, you find the
same characters, and differences of character, temperament,
passion, and intellect. But undoubtedly the habits of life
of each class give a special cast and expression to the
average underlymg humanity. The fashionable, the intel-
lectual, and the commercial classes are each narrowed down
in their different ways and along their own lines ; that great
class which lives in direct contact with Nature and the actual
facts of life seems to me (notwithstanding the specially try-
ing circumstances of its life in the present day) to be by far
the least narrowed, to be by far the most human \ and I
shall always be thankful that I have come to know it, as I
have done, and to learn some of the best lessons of my life
from it.

I do not think therefore that in contemplating the
changes that are coming upon society, the change from the
rule of Capital to the rule of Labor, from Plutocracy to Demo-
cracy, from Constitutionalism to Socialism — or whatever
you like to call it — we need be alarmed about the upshot
or imagine that chaos is before us. For my part I hail the
oncoming of this change, and believe that, through what-
ever struggle and suffering for the time, it will end in the
establishment of a far nobler freer life in the land and in
a broader overshadowing of the wings of justice and of
peace.

SOCIAL PROGRESS
AND INDIVIDUAL EFFORT.

"ThcuniTcnE could not tuive been createdil God were not imati."

The Prt^ress of Society is a subject which occupies much
attention nowadays. We hear the shouts and cries of
^formers, and are inclined sometimes to be vexed at thtir
noisy insistance and brandishing of panaceas; but when we
come to look into the evils to which they draw our attention
— under our very noses as it were — and see how serious they
are ; when we see the misery, the suffering all around us,
and see, too, how directly in some cases this appears to be
traceable to certain institutions, we can hardly be human if
we do not make some effort to alter these institutions and
the state of society which goes with them ; indeed, at times
we feel that it is our highest dutj to agitate with the noisiest,
and insist at all costs that justice should be done, the iniquity
swept away.

And yet on the other hand, when, retiring from the heat
and noise of conflict, we mount a httle in thought and look
out over the world, when we realise—what indeed every day
is becoming more abundantly clear — that Society is the
gigantic growth of centuries, moving on in an irresistible
and ordered march of its own, with the precision and fatalltST
of an astronomic orb, how absurd seem all our demonsir,'
tions I what an idle beating of the air ! The huge bear
comes on with elephantine tread. The Liberal sit

46 SOCIAL PROGRESS AND INDIVIDUAL EFFORT,

head, and the Conservative sits on his tail ; but both are
borne along whether they will or no, and both are shaken
off before long, inevitably, into the dust. One reformer shouts
"This way," and another shouts "That," but the great
foot comes down and crushes them both, indifferent, crushes
the one who thought he was right and the one who found
he was wrong, crushes him who would facilitate its progress
and him who would stop it, alike.

I confess that I am continually borne about between
these two opposing views. On the one hand is Justice,
here and now, which must and shall be done. On the other
hand is destiny indifferent, coming down from eternity,
which cannot be altered.

Where does the truth lie ? Is there any attainable truth
in the matter ? Perhaps not. The more I think of it, the
more am I persuaded that the true explanations, theories,
of the social changes which we see around us, that the forces
which produce them, that the purposes which they fulfil,
lie deep, deep down unsuspected; that the profoundest
hitherto Science (Buckle, Comte, Marx, Spencer, Morgan,
and the rest) has hardly done more than touch the skirt of
this great subject. The surface indications, currents, are
elusive ; the apparent purposes very different from the real
ones ; individuals, institutions, nations, more or less like
puppets or pieces in a game ; — the hand that moves them
altogether unseen, screening itself effectually from observa-
tion.

Let me take an illustration. You see a young plant
springing out of the ground. You are struck by the eager
vital growth of it. What elasticity, energy ! how it snatches
contributions from the winds and sunlight and the earth
beneath, and rays itself out with hourly fresh adornment !
You become interested to know what is the meaning of all;
this activity. You watch the plant. It unfolds. Thcleal »

i

•■-T*

SOaAL FROGRESS AND IHDiriDUAL EFFORT. 47

bud breaks and discloses leaves. These, then, are what it
has been aiming at.

But in the axils of the leaves'are other leaf-buds, and from
these more leaves ! The young shoot branches and becomes
a little free or bush. The branching and budding go on, a
repetition apparently of one formula. Presently, however,
a flower-bud appears. Now we see the real object !

Have you then ever carefully examined a flower-bud?
Take a rosebud, for instance, or better still perhaps, a dahlia.
When quite young the buds of these latter are mere green
knobs. Cut one across with your penknife : you will see
a green or whitish mass, apparently without organisation.
Cut another open which is more advanced, and you will see
traces of structural arrangement, even markirigs and lines
faintly pencilled on its surface, like the markings that shoot
thro' freezing water — sketches and outhnes of what is to
follow ; later, and your bud will disclose a distinct formation ;
beneath an outer husk or film — transparent in the case of
the dahlia — the petals can already be distinguished, marked,
though not actually separated from each other. Here they
lie in block as it were, conceived yet not shapen, like the
statue in the stone, or the thought in the brain of the
sculptor. But they are growing momently and expanding.
The outermost, or sepals, cohering form a husk, which for
a time protects the young bud. But it also confines it. A
Struggle ensues, a strangulation, and then the husk gives way,
falls off or passes into a secondary place, and the bud opens.

And now the petals uncurl and free themselves like living
things to the light. But the process is not finished. Each
petal expanding shows another beneath, and these younger
ones, as they open, push the older ones outwards, and while
these latter are fading ihere are still new ones appesfingu
the centre. Enjelope after envelope exfoliated—"
tekwoCUfe.

48 SOCIAL PROGRESS AND INDIVIDUAL EFFORT.

At last however within the most intimate petals appears
the central galaxy — the group of the sexual organs. And now
the flower (the petal-flower), which just before in all its
glory of form color and fragrance seemed to be the cul-
minating expression and purpose of the plant's life, appears
only as a means, an introduction, a secondary thing — a
mere advertisement and lure to wandering insects. Within
it lies the golden circle of the stamens, the magic staff" of
the pistil, and the precious ark or seed-vessel.

Now then we know what it has all been for, or think we
do —for a moment ; then we perceive that we are mistaken.
For the appearance of the seed-vessel is not the end ; it is
only a beginning. The flower, the petals, now drop oil
withered and useless ; their work is done. But the seed-
vessel begins to swell, to take on structure and form — ^just
as the formless bud did before — there is something at work
within. And now it bursts, opens, and falls away. It too
is a husk, and no longer of any importance — for within it
appear the seeds ^ the objects of this long toil !

Is the investigation finished ? is the process at an end ?
—No.

Here within this tiny seed lies the promise, the purpose,
the vital principle, the law, the inspiration— whatever you
like to call it — of this plant's life. Can you find it ?

The seed falls to the ground. It swells and takes on
form and structure — ^just as the seed-vessel which enclosed
it took on form and structure before — and as the flower-bud
(which enclosed the seed-vessel) did before that — and as
the leaf-bud (which enclosed the flower-bud) did before
that. The seed falls to the ground ; it throws off" a husk
(always husks thrown off"!) — and discloses an embryo plant
radicle, plumule, and cotyledons — root-shoot, stem-shoot,
and seed-leaves — complete. And the circle begins again.

We are baffled after all 1 AVe have followed this extra-

SOCIAL PROGRESS AND INDIVIDUAL EFFORT. 49

ordinary process, we have seen each stage of the plant-
growth appearing first as final, and then only as the envelope
of a later stage. We have stripped off, so to speak, husk
after husk, in our search for the inner secret of the plant-
life — we have got down to the tiny seed. But the seed we
have found turns out (like every other stage) to be itself
only an envelope — to be thrown away in its turn — what we
want lies still deeper down. The plant-life begins again —
or rather it never ends ; but on closer examination we
see that that does not repeat itself — it does not move in a
circle, but rather in a spiral. The young plant is not the
same as the parent, and the next generation varies again
from this. When the envelopes have been thrown oif a
thousand and a hundred thousand times more, a new form
will appear ; will this be a nearer and more perfect expres-
sion than before of that within-lying secret — or otherwise ?

To return to Society : I began by noting the contrast,
often drawn, between the stern inexorable march of this as
a whole, and the equally imperious determination of the in-
dividual to interfere with its march — a determination excited
by the contemplation of what is called evil, and shapen by
an ideal of something better arising within him. Think
what a commotion there must be within the bud when the
petals of a rose are forming ! Think what arguments, what
divisions, what recriminations, even among the atoms. An
organisation has to be constructed and completed. It is
finished at last, and a petal is formed. It rays itself out in
the sun, is beautiful and unimpeachable for a day ; then it
fades, is pushed off, its work is done — another from within
takes its place.

One social movement succeeds another ; the completion
of one is the signal for the commencement of the next.
Hence there can be no stereotyping : not to change is to
die — this is the rule of Lifil^^^ftU^.e (and the reason is

50 SOCIAL PROGRESS AND INDIVIDUAL EFFORT.

simple enough) one form is not enough to express the secret
of life. To express that requires an infinite series of forms.

Even a crab cannot get on without changing its shell It
outgrows it. It feels v^ uncomfortable — pent, sullen, and
irritable (much as the bud did before the bursting of the
husk, or as society does when dead forms and institutions —
generally represented by a class in power — confine its growth)
— anxious, too, and oppressed with fears. It — the crab —
retires under a rock, out of harm's way, and presently,
crack ! the shell scales off, and with quietude and patience
from within another more suited to it forms. Yet this latter
is not final. It is merely the prelude to another.

The feudal arrangement of society succeeded the clannish
and patriarchal, the commercial or competitive system
succeeds the feudal, the socialistic succeeds the commercial,
and the socialistic is succeeded in its turn by other stages ;
and each of these includes numerous minor developments.
The politician or reformer who regards any of these stages
or steps as containing the whole secret and redemption of
society commits just the same mistake as the theologian
who looks upon any one doctrine as necessary to salvation.
He is betrayed into the most frightful harshness, narrow-
mindedness, and intolerance — and if he has power will
become a tyrant. Just the same danger has to be guarded
against by every one of us in daily life. Who is there who
(though his reason may contend against it) does not drop
into the habit of regarding some one change in his life and
surroundings as containing finally the secret of his happi-
ness, and excited by this immense prospect, does not do
things which he afterwards regrets, and which end in dis-
appointment. There is a millennium, but it does not belong
to any system of society that can be named, nor to any
doctrine, belief, circumstance, or surrounding of individual
life. The secret of the plant-life does not tarry in any one

SOCIAL PROGRESS AND INDIVmUAL EFFORT. 5 1

phase of its growth ; it eludes from one phase to another,
still lying within and within the latest. It is within the grain
of mustard seed : it is so small. Yet it rules and is the
purpose of every stage, and is like the little leaven which,
invisible in three measures of meal, yet leavened the whole
lump.

Of the tendency, of which I have spoken, of social forms
to stereotype themselves, Law is the most important and in
some sense the most pernicious instance. Social progress
is a continual fight against it. Popular customs get har-
dened into laws. Even thus they soon constitute ^vils.
But in the more complex stages of society, when classes
arise, the law making is generally in the hands of a class,
and the laws are hardened (often very hardened) class
practices. These shells have to be thrown off and got rid
of at all costs — or rather they will inevitably be thrown
off when the growing life of the people underneath forces
this liberation. It is a bad sign when a patient " law-
abiding '* people submit like sheep to old forms which are
really long out-worn. " Where the men and women think
lightly of the laws . . . there the great city stands,"
says Walt Whitman.

I remember once meeting with a pamphlet written by an
Italian, whose name I have forgotten, member of a Secu-
larist society, to prove that the Devil was the author of all
human progress. Of course that, in his sense, is true. The
spirit of opposition to established order, the war against the
continuance (as a finality) of any institution or order, how-
ever good it may be for the time, is a necessary element of
social progress, is a condition of the very life of Society.
Without this it would die.

Law is a strangulation. Yet while it figures constantly as

an evil in social life, it must not thezafoee tip imagined to

be bad or without use. On the Goa||||||||||||||||^ appear-

E— 2

52 SOCIAL PROGRESS AND INDIVIDUAL EFFORT.

ance as an evil is part of its use. It is the husk which
protects and strengthens the bud while it confines it. Possibly
the very confinement and forcible repression which it exer-
cises is one element in the more rapid organisation of the
bud within. It is the crab's shell which gives form and
stability to the body of the creature, but which has to give
way when a more extended form is wanted.

In the present day in modern society the strangulation of
the growth of the people is effected by the capitalist class.
This class together with its laws and institutions constitutes
the husk which has to be thrown off just as itself threw off
the husk of the feudal aristocracy in its time. The com-
mercial and capitalist envelope has undoubtedly served to
protect and give form to (and even nourish) the growing life
of the people. But now its function in that respect is
virtually at an end. It appears merely as an obstacle and
an evil — and will inevitably be removed, either by a violent
disruption or possibly by a gradual absorption into the
socialised proletariat beneath.

At all times, and from whatever points of view, it should
be borne in mind that laws are made by the people,
not the people by the laws. Modern European Society is
cumbered by such a huge and complicated overgrowth
of law, that the notion actually gets abroad that such ma-
chinery is necessary to keep the people in order — that with-
out it the mass of the people would not live an orderly life ;
whereas all observation of the habits of primitive and
savage tribes, destitute of laws, and almost destitute of any
authoritative institutions — ^and all observation of the habits
of civilised people when freed from law (as in gold-mining
and other back wood communities) — show just the reverse.
The instinct of man is to an orderly life, the law is but the
result and expression of this. As well attribute the or-
ganisation of a crab to the influence of its shell, as attribute

SOCIAL PROGRESS AND INDIVIDUAL EFFORT. 53

the orderly life of a nation to the action of its laws. Law has
a purpose and an influence — but the idea that it is to pre-
serve order is elusive. All its machinery of police and
prisons do not, cannot do this. At best in this sense it
only preserves an order advantageous to a certain class ; it
is the weapon of a slow and deliberate warfare. It springs
from hatred and rouses opposition, and so has a healthy
influence.

Fichte said : " The object of all government is to render
government superfluous.'' And certainly if external au-
thority of any kind has a final purpose it must be to
establish and consolidate an internal Authority. Whitman
adds to his description of "the great city," that it
stands '* Where outside authority enters always after the
precedence of inside authority.*' When this process is
complete, government in the ordinary sense is already
"rendered superfluous.*' Anyhow this external govern-
mental power is obviously self-destructive. It has no per-
manence or finality about it, but in every period of history
appears as a husk or shell preparing the force within which
is to reject it.

Thus I have in a very fragmentary and imperfect way
called attention to some general conditions of social pro-
gress, conditions by which the growth of Society is probably
comparable with the growth of a plant, or an animal, or an
astronomic organism, subject to laws and an order of its
own, in face of which the individual would at first sight
appear to count as nothing. But there is, as usual, a
counter-truth which must not be overlooked. If Society
moves by an ordered and irresistible march of its own, so
also — as a part of Society, and beyond that as a part of
Nature — does the individual. In his right place the in-
dividual is also irresistible.

Now then, when you have seized your life-inspiration,

54 SOCIAL PROGRESS AND INDIVIDUAL EFFORT.

your absolute determination, you also are irresistible, the
whole weight of this vast force is behind you. Huge as
the institutions of Society are, vast as is the sweep of its
traditions and customs, yet in face of it all, the word " I
will " is not out of place.

Let us take the law of the competitive struggle for exis-
tence — which has been looked upon by political economists
(perhaps with some justice) as the base of social life. It is
often pointed out that this law of competition rules through-
out the animal and vegetable kingdoms as well as through
the region of human society, and therefore, it is said, being
evidently a universal law of Nature, it is useless and hope-
less to expect that society can ever be founded on any
other basis. Yet I say that granting this assumption — ^and
in reality the same illusion underlies the application of the
word " law " here, as we saw before in its social application
— ^granting, I say that competition has hitherto been the
universal law, the last word, of Nature, still if only one
man should stand up and say, " It shall be so no more," if
he should say, " It is not the last word of my nature, and
my acts and life declare that it is not," — then that so-called
law would be at an end. He being a part of Nature has as
much right to speak as any other part, and as in the ele-
mentary law of hydrostatics a slender column of water can
balance (being at the same height) against an ocean — so
his Will (if he understand it aright) can balance all that can
be arrayed against him. If only one man — with regard to
social matters — speaking from the very depth of his heart
says "This shall not be: behold something better;" his
word is hkely stronger than all institutions, all traditions.
And why? — because in the deeps of his individual heart he
touches also that of Society, of Man. Within himself, in
quiet, he has beheld the secret, he has seen a fresh crown
•of petals, a golden circle of stamens, folded and slumbering

M

SOCIAL PROGRESS AND IWOIVIDUAI. EFFORT, 55

in the bud. Man fonns society, its laws and institutions,
and Mstn can reform them. Somewhere within yourself, be
assured, the secret of that authority lies.

The fatal words spoken by individuals — the words of
progress — are provoked by what is called evil. Every
human institution is good in its time, and then becomes
evil— yet it may be doubted whether it is really evil in itself,
but rather because if it remained it would hinder the next
step. Each petal is pusJied out by the next one. A new
growth of the moral sense takes place first within the
individual — and this gives birth to a new ideal, something to
love better than anything seen before. Then in llie light of
this new love, tliis more perfect desire, what has gone be-
fore, and the actually existing things appear wizened and
fake {i.e., ready to fall like the petals). They become some-
thing to hate, they are evil ; and the perception of evil is
already the promise of something better.

Do not be misled so as to suppose that science and the
intellect are or can be the sources of social progress or
change. It is the moral births and outgrowths that originate^
science and the intellect only give form to these. It is a
common notion and one apparently gaining ground, that
science may as it were take Society by the hand and be-
come its high priest and guide to a glorious kingdom. And
this to a certain extent is true. Science may become high-
priest, but the result of its priestly offices will entirely
depend on what kind of deity it represents— what kind of
god Society worships. Science will doubtless become its
guide, but whither it leads Society will entirely depend on
whither Society desires to be led. If Society worships a
god of selfish curiosity, the holy rites aB4 priesthood of
science will consist in vivisection and the torture of the
loving animals; if Society believes iil-v liidgs in

^■JNtiban^ results,'science will befon

55 SOCIAL PROGRESS AND INDIVIDUAL EFFORT.

— it will surround men with machinery and machine-made
products, it will whirl them about (behind steam-kettles as
Mr. Ruskin says) from one end of the world to the other, it
will lap them in every luxury and debility, and give them
fifty thousand toys to play with, where before they had only
one — but through all the whistling of the kettles and the
rattling of the toys it will not make the still small voice of
God sound nearer. If Society, in short, worships the
devil, science will lead it to the devil ; and if Society wor-
ships God, science will open up and clear away much that
encumbered the path to God. (And here I use these terms
as lawyers say " without prejudice.*') No mere scientific
adjustments will bring about the millennium. Granted that
the problem is Happiness, there must be certain moral
elements in the mass of mankind before they will even
desire that kind of happiness which is attainable, let alone
their capacity of reaching it — when these moral elements
are present, the intellectual or scientific solution of the
problem will be soon found, without them there will not
really be any serious attempt made to find it. That is — as
I said at the head of this paragraph — science and the in-
tellect are not, and never can be, the sources of social
progress and change. It is the moral births and out-
growths that originate ; the intellect stands in a secondary
place as the tool and instrument of the moral faculty.

The commercial and competitive state of society may be
taken to indicate an upheaval from the feudal of a new (and
perhaps grander) sentiment of human right and dignity.
Arising simultaneously with Protestantism it meant — they
both meant — individualism, the assertion of man's worth
and dignity as man, and as against any feudal lordship or
priestly hierarchy. It was an outburst of feeling first. It
was the sense of equality spreading. It took the form of
individualism — the equality of rights — Protestantism in

SOCIAL PROGRESS AND INDIVIDUAL EFFORT. 57

religion, competition in commerce. It resulted in the
social emancipation of a large class, the bourgeoisie. Feu-
dalism, now dwindled to a husk, was thrown off; and for a
time the glory, the life of society was in the new order.

But to-day a wider morality, or at least a fresh impulse,
asserts itself. Competition in setting itself up as the symbol
of human equality, was (like all earthly representations of
what is divine) only an imperfect symbol. It had the
elements of mortality and dissolution in it. For while it
destroyed the privilege of rank and emancipated a huge
class, it ended after all by enslaving another class and
creating the privilege of wealth. Competition in fact re-
presented a portion of human equality but not the whole :
insisting on individual rights all round, it overlooked the
law of charity, turned sour with the acid of selfishness, and
became as to-day the gospel of " the devil take the hind-
most.'* Arising glorious as the representative of human
equality, and the opponent of iniquity in high places, it has
ended by denying the very source from whence it sprung.
Like many a popular hero it has turned tyrant, and must
share the tyrant's doom.

Competition is doomed. Once a good, it has now become
an evil. But simultaneously (and probably as part of the
same process) springs up, as I say, a new morality.
Everywhere to-day signs of this may be seen, felt. It is
felt that the relation which systematically allows the weaker
to go to the wall is not human. Individualism, the mere
separate pursuit, each of his own good, on the basis of
equality, does not satisfy the heart. The rig/it (undoubted
though it may be) to take advantage of another's weakness
or inferiority, does not please us any longer. Science and
the intellect have nothing to say to this, for or against, —
they can merely stand and look on — arguments may be
brought on both sides. What I say is that as a fact a change

^

58 SOCIAL PROGRESS AND INDIVIDUAL EFFORT.

is taking place in the general sentiment in this matter ; some
deeper feeling of humm solidarity, brotherliness, charity,
some more genuine and substantial apprehension of the
meaning of the word equality, is arising — some broader and
more determined sense of justice. ThoUgh making itself
felt as yet only here and there, still there are indications
that this new sentiment is spreading ; and if it becomes
anything like general, then inevitably (I say) it will bring a
new state of society with it — will be in fact such new state
of society.

Some years ago at Brighton I met with William Smith,
the author of " Thorndale " and other works — a man who
had thought much about society and human life. He was
then quite an invalid, and indeed died only a week or two
later. Talking one day about the current Political Economy
he said : " They assume self-interest as the one guiding
principle of human nature and so make it the basis of their
science — but," he added, " even if it is so now, it may not
always be so, and that would entirely re-model their
science." I do not know whether he was aware that even
then a new school of political economy was in existence,
the school of Marx, Engels, Lassalle, and others — founded
really on just this new basis, taking as its point of departure
a stricter sense of justice and a new conception of human
right and equality. At any rate, whether aware or not, I con-
tend that this dying man — even if he had been alone in the
world in his aspiration— 3^^//«^ within himself a deeper,
more intimate, principle of action than that expressed in the
existing state of society, might have been confident that at
some tims or other — if not immediately — it would come to
the surface and find its due interpretation and translation in
a new order of things. And I contend that whoever to-day
feels in himself that there is a better standard of life than
the higgling of the market, and a juster scale of wages than

SOCIAL PROGRESS AND INDIVIDUAL EFFORT. 59

** what A. or B. will take^^ and a more important question
in an undertaking than " how much per cent, it will pay *' —
contains or conceals in himself the germs of a new social
order.

Socialism, if that is to be the name of the next wave of
social life, springs from and demands as its basis a new sen-
timent of humanity, a higher morality. That is the essential
part of it. A science it is, but only secondarily ; for we
must remember that as the bourgeois political economy
sprang from certain moral data, so the socialist political
economy implies other moral data. Both are irrefragable on
their own axioms. And when these axioms in course of
time change again (as they infallibly will) another science of
political economy, again irrefragable, will spring up, and
socialist political economy will be false.

The morality being the essential part of the ihovement,
it is important to keep that in view. If Socialism, as Mr.
Matthew Arnold has pointed out, means merely a change ot
society without a change of its heart — it merely means that
those who grabbed all the good things before shall be dis-
placed, and that those who were grabbed from should now
grab in their turn — it amounts to nothing, and is not in
effect a change at all, except quite upon the surface. If it is
to be a substantial movement, it must mean a changed ideal,
a changed conception of daily life; it must mean some
better conception of human dignity — such as shall scorn to
claim anything for its own which has not been duly earned,
and such as shall not find itself degraded by the doing of
any work, however menial, which is useful to society ; it
must mean simpHcity of life, defence of the weak, courage
of one's own convictions, charity of the faults and failings
of others. These things first and a larger slice of pudding
all round afterwards !

How can such morality be spread ? — How does a piaal

a

60 SOCIAL PROGRESS AND INDIVIDUAL EFFORT.

grow ? — It grows. There is some contagion of influence in
these matters. Knowledge can be taught directly ; but a
new ideal, a new sentiment of life, can only pass by some
indirect influence from one to another. Yet it does pass.
There is no need to talk — perhaps the less said in any case
about these matters the better — but if you have such new
ideal within you, it is I believe, your clearest duty, as well
as your best interest, to act it out in your own life at all ap-
parent costs. Then we must not forget that a wise order
of society once established (by the strenuous action of a
few) reacts on its members. To a certain extent it is true,
perhaps, that men and women can be grown — like cab-
basjes. And this is a case of the indirect influence of the
strenuous few upon the many.

Thus — in this matter of society's change and progress —
(though I feel that the subject as a whole is far too deep for
me) — I do think that the birth of new moral conceptions in
the individual is at least a very important factor. It may be
in one individual or in a hundred thousand. As a rule pro-
bably when one man feels any such impulse strongly, the
hundred thousand are nearer to him than he suspects.
(When one leaf, or petal, or stamen begins to form on a
tree, or one plant begins to push its way above the ground
in spring, there are hundreds of thousands all round just
ready to form.) Anyhow, whether he is alone or not, the
new moral birth is sacred — as sacred as the child within the
mother's womb — it is a kind of blasphemy against the Holy
Ghost to conceal it. And when I use the word ** moral"
here — or anywhere above — I do not, I hope, mean that
dull pinch-lipped conventionality of negations which often
goes under that name. The deep-lying ineradicable desires,
fountains of human action, the life-long aspirations, the
lightning-like revelations of right and justice, the treasured
hidden ideals, born in flame and in darkness, in joy and

SOCIAL PROGRESS AND INDIVIDUAL EFFORT. 6 1

sorrow, in tears and in triumph, within the heart — are as a
rule anything but conventional. They may be, and often
are, thought ////moral. I don't care, they are sacred just
the same. If they underlie a man's life, and are nearest
to himself — they will underlie humanity. To your own self
be true . . . .'*

Anyhow courage is better than conventionality : take
your stand and let the world come round to you. Do
not think you are right and everybody else wrong. If you
think you are wrong then you may be right ; but if you
think you are right then you are certainly wrong. Your
deepest highest moral conceptions are only for a time. They
have to give place. They are the envelopes of freedom — that
eternal Freedom which cannot be represented — that peace
which passes understanding. Somewhere here is the in-
visible vital principle, the seed within the seed. It may be
held but not thought, felt but not represented — except by
life and history. Every individual so far as he touches this
stands at the source of social progress — behind the screen
on which the phantasmagoria play.

DESIRABLE MANSIONS.

*' The widow Doo^as, die took me for her son. and aUowed At woold cmltae
me ; but it was rouefa fiviag in the hoa*e all the time, coosideriiig how dismal
r^alar and decent the widow was in all her waya ; and ao when I oooldbt atand
it no longer I Ut oat." — Mark Twain.

Kttkbl all, why should we rail against the rich ? I think
if anything they should be pitied. In nine cases out of
ten it is not a man's fault. He is bom in the lap of
luxury, he grows up surrounded by absurd and imjpossible
ideas about life, the innumerable chains of habit and cir-
cumstance tighten upon him, and when the time comes
that he would escape, he finds he cannot. He is con-
demned to flop up and down in his cage for the remainder
of his days — a spectacle of boredom, and a warning to gods
and men.

I go into the houses of the rich. In the drawing-room I
»cc chill weary faces, peaked features of ill-health ; down-
stairs and in the kitchen I meet with rosy smiles, kissable
checks, and hear sounds of song and laughter. What is
thin? Is it possible that the real human beings live with
JcatncM bclow-stairs I

Often as I pass and see in suburb or country some
" (IcHirable mansion " rising from the ground, I think :
That man is building a prison for himself. So it is — a
prison. I would rather spend a calendar month in Clerk-
enwcll or Holloway than I would in that desirable man-
sion. ^^Bpung lady that I knew, and who lived in such a
mans*^^Bd with her sisters to teach a class of factory
girls. ^^ now and again one of the girls would say,

DESIRABLE MANSIONS. 63

" Eh, Miss, how I would like to be a grand lady like you ? "
Then she would answer, " Yes, but you wouldn*t be able to
do everything you liked; for instance, you wouldn-t be allowed
to go out walking when you liked." " Eh, dear ! ** they
would say to one another, " she is not allowed to go out
walking when she likes — she is not allowed to go out
walking when she likes ! **

Certainly you are not allowed to go out walking when
you like. Reader, did you ever spend a day within those
desirable walls ? I have, many. I wake up in the morn-
ing. It is fine and bright. I think to myself: I will have
a pleasant stroll before breakfast. Yes — man proposes. It
is all very well to meditate a morning walk, but where O
where are my clothes ? I cannot very well go out without
them. What can have become of them ? Suddenly it oc-
curs to me : James, honest soul, has taken them away to
brush. Good. I wait. Nothing happens. I ring the bell.
James appears. ** My clothes, James." ** Yes, sir." Again
I wait — an intolerable time. At last the familiar jacket and
trousers appear.* Good. Now I can go out. Not so fast
— ^where are your boots ? Boots, good gracious, I had for-
gotten them. Heaven knows where they are — I don't. Pro-
bably fifty yards away. I creep downstairs. All is quiet.
The servants are evidently at breakfast. It would be mad-
ness to hope to get boots brushed at such a moment, i
would like to clean them myself. In fact I am fond of
cleaning my own boots; the exercise is pleasant, and
besides it is just such a little bit of menial work as I would
rather do for myself than have others do for me ; but, as I
said before, one cannot do what one likes. In the first

* A friend tells me that once to revenge himself for (his sort of trifling he con-
cealed his nether garment under the mattrass, and then, in the morning, slyly
watched the footman as he vainly sought round the room for i.t. The consequence
however was that he fell very much in the estimation of the latter, who doubtless
thought that, like Matthew, Mack, Luke, and John, his master's visitor '* hid gope
to bed with his breeches on."

64 DESIRABLE MANSIONS.

place, in this house where one is fifty yards away from every-
thing one wants, I have not the faintest idea where my boots
are, or the means and instruments of blacking them ; in the
second place an even m^re fatal objection is that if I did
succeed in committing this deed of darkness the conse-
quent uproar in the house would be quite indescribable.
The outrage on propriety would not only shock the feelings
of the world below stairs, but it would put to confusion the
master of the house, upset the whole domestic machinery,
create unpleasant qualms in the minds of the other guests,
and possibly make me feel that I had better not have lived.
Accordingly I abandon the idea of my pleasant stroll. It
is not worth such a sacrifice. The birds are singing out-
side, the flowers are gay in the morning sun — but it must
not be. Within, in the sitting-rooms, chaos reigns. Chairs
and tables are piled in cheerful confusion upon one another,
carpets are partially strewn with tea-leaves. To read a book
or write an aimless letter to some one (the usual resource
of people in desirable mansions) is clearly impossible ; to
do anything in the way of house-work is forbidden — it being
well understood in such places that one may do anything
excfpt what is useful. There remains nothing but to beat
a retreat to my chamber again — put my hands in my pockets
and whistle at the open window.

" Who was that I heard whistling so early this morning?"
says my kindly old host at breakfast. ** O, it was you, was
it ? I expect now you're an early riser ; get up at seven,
take a walk before breakfast ; that sort of thing — eh ? "
" Yes, when I can," I reply with ambiguous intent " Well,
I call that wonderful," says an elderly matron— not likely,
as far as appearances go, to be accused of a similar practice —
** such energy, you know.'' " What a strong constitution
you must have to be able to stand it ! " remarks a charming
young lady on whom it has not yet dawned that the vast

DESIRABLE MANSIONS. 65

majority of human kind have their breakfast before half-
past nine.

This is not a good beginning to the day ; but the rest is
like unto it. I find that there are certain things to be
done — a certain code of things that you may do, a certain
way of doing them, a certain way of putting your knife and
fork on your plate. When you come down to dinner in
the evening you must put on what the Yankees call a claw-
hammer coat. It is not certain (and that is just the grisly
part of it) what would happen if you did not do this. In
some societies evidently such a casualty has never been
contemplated. I have heard people seriously discussing —
in cases where the required article was missing — what could
be done, where one might be borrowed, &c. — but clearly
it did not occut to them that anyone could dine in his
natural clothes. Sometimes, when in a fashionable church,
I have wondered whether it would be possible to worship
God in a flannel shirt — but I suppose that to go out to a
dinner party in such a costume would be even more un-
thinkable. As I said before, you are in prison. Submit to
the prison rules, and it is all right — attempt to go beyond
them, and you are visited with condign punishment. The
rules have no sense, but that does not matter (possibly some
of them had sense once, but it must have been a very long
time ago); the people are good people, no better nor
worse in themselves than the real workers, the real hands
and hearts of the world; but they are condemned to banish-
ment from the world, condemned into the prison houses of
futility. Th^ stream of human life goes past them as they
gaze wearily upon it through their plate-glass windows;
the great Mother's breasts of our common Humanity, with
all its toils and sufferings and mighty joys, are withheld
from them. Dimly at last I think I understand why it is
their faces are so chill and sad, their unnourished lives so

F

66 PESIKABWS: MAJ^SIQJJS.

unhealthy and over-sensitive. Truly, if Ixould pity a^y.one,
I would them.

By the side of the road there stands a little girl, crying ;
she has lost her way. Ijt is v^ry.cold, and she looks pinched
■and starved. "Come in, my little girl, and sit by my
■cottage fire, and youUl soon get warm ; and. I'll see if I can't
'find you, a bit of something: to eat before you go on . . .
Eh! dear! how stupid I amr— I quite forgot. I am sorry
I can't ask you in, but I am Hying in a desirable mansion
now — and though we are very, sorry for you, yet you see we
could hardly have you into our house, for your dirty little
boots would make a dreadful n^ess of our carpets, and we
should have to dust the chairs after you had sat upon Ihem,
and you see Mrs. Vavasour might happen to come in, and
she would think it so very odd\ and I kjiow cook can't
bear beggars^ and, O dear ! Tm so sorry for you — and
here's a penny, and I. hope you'll get home safely."

The stream of human life goes past. When a rich man
builds himself a prison, he puts up all these fences to shut
the world out — to shut himself in. If he ca,n he builds far
back from the high road. In the front of his house he has,
a boundless polite lawn, with polite flower beds, afar from
vulgar people and animals. Rows of politQ servants attend
upon him ; and there within of inanity and politeness he
dies. Of what human life really consists in he has Httle
idea. He has not the faintest notion of what is necessary
for human life or happiness. Sometimes with an indistinct
vision of accumulated evil, he says : " Poor So-and-so, he
has only ;£'2oo a year to keep his wife and family on !"
!No wonder his own daughters dedicate themselves to
■**good works." They go out with the curate and visit
:at neighboring cottages. Their visits have little appre-
■ciable effect on the people, but are a great benefit to them-
selves and the curate. They observe, for the first time,

DESIRABLE MANSIONS. 67

how life is carried'^oa ; they see* the opemtions of scrubbing
and cooking (removed in their own- houses afar from mortal
polite eye) ; perhaps^ they behold a mother actually suckling
her own babe, and' learn that such things are possible ;
finally, they- ** wonder "how "those people" live, and to
them their wonder (like- the fear af God) is the beginning
of wisdom. The lord of the^nansion sits on the magisterial
bench, or strides about his fields, and lumps together all
who are not in a similar position to himself as the " lower
classes." After, dinner in the evening, if the conversation
turns on politics, he and his compeers discuss the impor-
tance of keeping the said lower classes in order, or the best
method of " raising " them out of the ignorance and dis-
order in which they are supposed to wallow. And during
the conversation it will be noticed that it is by everyone
tacitly allowed and understood, and' is, in fact, the very
foundation of the whole argument, that/ the speakers them-
selves belong to an educated class, while the mass of the
people are uneducated. Yet this is exactly the reverse of
the truth — ^for they themselves belong to an ill-educated
class, and the mass of the people are, by the very nature of
the case, the better educated of the two.

In fact the education of the one set of people (and it is
a great pity that it should be so) consists almost entirely
in the study of books. That is very useful in its way, and
if properly balanced with other things ; but it is hardly
necessary to point out that books only deal with phantoms
and shadows of reality. The education of the world at
large, and the real education, lies, and must always lie, in
dealing with the things themselves. To put it shortly (as it
has been put before), one man learns to spell a " spade," to
write it, to rhyme it^ to translate it into French and Latin —
possibly, like Wordsworth, to address a sonnet to it — the
other man learns to use it. Is there any comparison between

F— 2

68 DESIRABLE MANSIONS.

the two ? Now is it not curious that those good people sit-
ting round their dinner table in the desirable mansion, or
listening to a little music in the drawing-room, should
actually be so ignorant of the world, and what goes on in
it, as to think, and honestly believe, that they are, par
excellence^ the educated people in it ? * Does it ever occur
to them, I often think, to inquire who made all the elegant
and costly objects with which they are surrounded? Does
it ever occur to them, as they tacitly assume the inferiority
of the working classes, to think of the table itself across
which they speak— how beautifully fitted, veneered,
polished ; the cloth which lies upon it, and the weaving
of it ; the chairs and other furniture, so light and yet so
strong, each requiring the skill of years to make ; the silver,
the glass, the steel, the tempering, hardening, grinding, fit-
ting, riveting ; the lace and damask curtains, the wonderful
machinery, the care, the delicate touch, adroit manipulation ?
the piano ! the very house itself wherein they spend their
days ! Is there one, I say, who we will not say could make
even the smallest part, but who even has the faintest idea
how one of these things is made, where it is made, who
makes it ? Not one. All the care, the loving thought, the
artistic design, the conscientious workmanship that have
been expended, and are daily expended, on these things
and the like of them — go past them unrecognised, un-
acknowledged. The great hymn of human labor over the
earth is to them an idle song. There, in the midst of all
these beautiful products of toil and ingenuity, possessing but
not enjoying, futile they sit, and fancy themselves educated —

» •• . . , . People who roll about in their fine equipages scarcely knowing
what to do with themselves or what ails them, and some of whom occasionally run
to such places as ours to have their carriage linings or cushions altered, or to
know if they ' can be altered as they don't feel fj>*ite comfortable* I often think
' God help them,' for no one else can

I insert this extract just to show how these things are regarded from the side
which does not usually find expression. It is from a letter written by an
elderly and gentle-hearted man employed in a carriage factory.

DESIRABLE MANSIONS. 69

fit to rule. I have heard of a fly that sat stinging upon the
hind-quarters of a horse, and fancied that without it the cart
would not go. Fancied so, 1 say, until the great beast
whisked its tail, and after that it fancied nothing more.

Do I put these things in a strong light ? May be I do ;
but I put them faithfully as I have seen them, and as I see
them daily. I do not suppose that riches are an evil in
themselves. I do not suppose that anything is an evil in
itself. I know that even in the midst of all these
shackles and impediments, that wonderfulest of things, the
human soul, may work out its own salvation ; and well I
know that there are no conditions or circumstances of
human life, nor any profession from a king to a prostitute,
that may not become to it the gateway of freedom and im-
mortality. But I daily see people setting this standard of
well-to-do respectability before them, daily more and more
hastening forth in quest of desirable mansions to dwell in ;
and I cannot but wonder whether they realise what it is they
seek ; I cannot lend my voice to swell the chorus of en-
couragement. Here are the clean facts. Choose for your-
selves. That is all.

Respectability ! Heavy-browed and hunch-backed word ;
Once innocent and light-hearted as any other word, why
now in thy middle age art thou become so gloomy and
saturnine ? Is it that thou art responsible for the murder of
the innocents ? Respectability ! Vision of clean hands and
blameless dress — why dost thou now appear in the form of
a ghoul before me ?

I confess that the sight of a dirty hand is dear to me.
It warms my heart with all manner of good hopes and
promises. Often and long have I thought about this
matter, and in all good faith I must say that I fail to see
how hands always clean are compatible with honest)^
This i^ no play upon words. I fail to see how in the long

JO DESIRABLE MANSI0KS.

run, any man that takes his shaire in the work of the'wdrld
can keep his hands in this desirable- st^te.

How ? The answer is obvious enough — leave 6thers to
do the dirty work. Good! Let it be so; let it be granted
that others shall do the scrubbing and baking, the digging,
the fishing, the breaking of horses, the <Kirpentering, build-
ing, smithing, and the myriad other jobs that havie to be
done, and you at the pinnacle of all 'this pyramid of work,
above all, keep your hands clean. We shouting to you
from below, exhort you^At all costs, keep yOUr hands
clean ! Think how important it is, while the great ships
have to be got into harbor, that your nails should be
blameless! Think if by any accident you were to do a
real good piece of work, and get your hands thoroughly
grimed over it, unwashable for a ^eck, what confusion
would ensue to yourself and friends! Think, O think of
your clients, or of the next dinner party, and earnestly axid
prayerfully resolve that 45uch a fall may never be yours.
Seek, w« pray you, some secure work — ^some legal, clerical,
official, capitalist, or land*owning business, safe from the
dread stain of dirty hands, whatever other dirt it may bring
with it- — some thoroughly gentlemanly ptofession, marking
you clearly off from the vulgar and general masses, and the
blessing of heaven go with you !

• Shut yourself off from the great Stream of human -life,
from the great sources of physical and moral health ; ignore
the common labor by which you live, show clearly your
contempt for it, your dislike of it, and then ask others to do
it for you; turn aside from nature, divorce yourself from
the living breathing heart of the nation ; and then you will
have done what the governing classes of England to-day
have done, have given full directions to your own heart
and brain how to shrivel and starve and die.

Man is made .to work with his hands. This is a fact

DESIRABLE MANSIONS. 7 1

which cannot be got over. From this central fact he
cannot travel far. I donft cafe whether it is an individual
or a class, the life which is far removed from this becomes
corrupt, shrivelled, and diseased. You may explain it how
you like, but it is so. Administrative work has to be done
in a nation as well as productive work; but it must be done
by men accustomed to manual Idbor, who have the healthy
decision and primitive authentic judgment which comes of
that, else it cannot be done ^vell. In the new form of
society which is slowly advancing upon us, this "will be felt
more than now. The higher the position of trust a man
occupies the more will it be thought important that, at
some period of his life, he should have been thoroughly
inured to manual work ; this not only on account of the-
physical and moral robustness implied by it, but equally^
because it will be seen to be impossible for anyone, without
this experience of what is the very flesh and blood of
national life, to promote the good health of the nation, or
to understand the conditions under which the people live
wliom he has to serve.

But to return to the^ofrOws of the well-to-do— and care
that sits on the crupper of wealth. This is a world-old and
well-worn subject. Yet, possibly, some of its truisms may
bear repeating. A clergyman, preaching once on the trials
of life, turned first to his rich friends and bade them call to
•mind, one by one, the sorrows and sufferings of the poor ;
then, turning to his " poorer brethren," he exhorted them
also not to forget that the rich man had his afflictions — ^with
which they should S3aiipathise — amongst which afflictions,
growing chiefly out of their much money, he reckoned
*' last, but not least, the difficulty of finding for it an invest-
ment which should be profitable and also secure I " It has
been generally supposed that the poorer brethern failed to
sympathise with this form of suffering.

72 DESIRABLE MANSIONS.

But it is a very real one. What cares, what anxieties,
what yellow and blue fits, what sleepless nights, dance at-
tendance on the worshiper in the great Temple of Stocks !
The capricious deity that dwells there has to be appeased
by ceaseless offerings. Usury ! crookfaced idol, loathed, yet
grovelled to by half the world, whose name is an abomina-
tion to speak openly, yet whose secret rites are practised by
thousands who revile thy name, what spell of gloom and
bilious misery dost thou cast over thy worshipers ! Is it
possible that the ancient curse has not yet lost its effect :
that to acquire interest on money and to acquire interest in
life are not the same thing ; that they are positively not
compatible with each other; that to fly from one's just
share of labor in the world, in order to live upon the
hard-earned profits of others, is not, and cannot come to
good ? Is it possible, I say, reader, that there is a moral
law in the world facing us quite calmly in every transaction
of our lives by which it must be so — by which cowardice
and sham cannot breed anything else for us but gloom and
bilious misery ? In this age which rushes to stocks — to
debenture, preference, consolidated, and ordinary stocks,
to shares, bonds, coupons, dividends — not even refusing
scrip when it can get it — does it ever occur to us to con-
sider what it all means ? — to consider that all the money so
gained is taken from some one else ; that what we have
not earned cannot possibly be ours, except by gift, or
(putting it plainly) theft 1 How can it then come with a
blessing ? How can we not but think of the railway opera-
tives, the porters, managers, clerks, superintendents, drivers,
stokers, platelayers, carriage-washers, navvies, out of whose
just earnings (and from no other source) our dividends are
taken ? Let alone honesty — what, surely, does our pride
say to this ? Is it possible that this frantic dividend-dance
of the present day is like a dance of dancers dancing with-

DESIRABLE MANSIONS. 73

«

out any music — an aimless incoherent impossible dance,
weltering down at last to idiocy and oblivion ?

Curious, is it not, that this subject (of dividends) is never
mentioned before said wage-receiving classes ? I have often
noticed that. When James enters the room, or Jeffery
comes to look at the gas-fittings, the babble of stocks dies
faintly away, as if ashamed of itself? and while a man will,
without reserve, allude to his professional salary, he is
generally as secret concerning his share-gotten gains as
ladies are said to be about their age.

But, as I said at first, these things are not generally a
man's fault. They are the product of the circumstances in
which he is born. From his childhood he is trained osten-
sibly in the fear of God, but really in the fear of money.
The whole tenor of the conversation which he hears round
him, and his early teaching, tend to impress upon him the
awful dangers of not having enough. Strange that it never
occurs to parents of this class to teach their children how
little they can live upon, and be happy (but perhaps they
do not know). Hence the child of the poor man — even
in these adverse times — ^grows up with some independence
of mind, for he knows that if at any time he can obtain
£i^^ or;^ioo a year by the work of his hands, he will be
able to bring up a little family ; while the son of a rich man
in the midst of a family income of fifty times ;£'5o, learns
to tremble slavishly at the prospect of the future ; dark
hints of the workhouse are whispered in his ears ; father
and mother, school-teachers and friends, join in pressing
him into a profession which he hates — stultifying his whole
life — because it will lead to ;^5oo, or even ;^i,ooo a year
in course of time. This is the great test, the sure criterion
between two paths : which will lead to more money ? The
youthful tender conscience soon comes to look upon it as a
duty, and the acquisition of large dividends as part of the

74 DESIRABLE MANSIONS.

serious work of life. Then come true the words of the
preacher: he realises with painful clearness the difficulty of
finding investments which shall be profitable and also secure ;
circulars, repbrts, newspaper-cuttings, and warning letters
flow in upon him, sleepless nights are followed by anxious
days, telegrams and railway journeys succeed each other.
But the game goes on : the income gets bigger, and the fear
of the workhouse looms closer ! Friends and relations also
have shares. Some get married and others die. Hence
trustee-ships and executor-ships, increasing in number year
by year, coil upon coil ; solicitors hover around on all sides,
jungles of legal red tape have to be waded through, chancery
looms up with its " obscene birds " upon the horizon, and
the hapless boy, now an old man before his time, with
snatched meals and care-lined brow, goes to and fro like an
automaton — a walking testimony to his own words that
" the days of his happiness are long gone past." Before
(Jod, I would rather with pick and shovel dig a yearlong
drain beneath the open sky, breathing freely, than I would
live in this jungle of idiotic duties and thin-lipped respecta-
bilities that money breeds. Why the devil should the days
of your happiness be gone past, except that you have lived a
life to stultify the whole natural man in you ? Do you think
that happiness is a little flash-in-the-pan when you are eight-
teen, and that is all ? Do you not know that expanding
age, like a flower, lifts itself ever into a more and more
exquisite sunlight of happiness — to which Death, serene
and beautiful, comes only at the last with the touch of per-
fected assurance ? Do you not know that the whole effort
of Nature in you is towards this happiness, if you could
only abandon yourself, and for one child-like moment have
faith in your own mother? But she knows it, and watches
you, half amused, run after your little '* securities," knowing
surely that you must at length return to her.

DESIRABLE MitNSIONS. 75

But wherein the affluent classes suffer most in the present
day I perhaps is the matter of health. Into that heaven it is
indeed hard for a rich man to enter. Here again the whole
tradition of his life is against him. If there is one thing
that appears to me more certain than another it is^as I have
partly said before, that no individual or class can travel far
from the native life of the race without J^ecoming shrivelled,
corrupt, diseased -^without suffering, in fact. By the native
life I mean the life of those (always the vast majority of
human kind) who live and support themselves in direct
contact with Nature.* To rise early, to be mostly in the
open air, to do some amount of physical labor, to eat clean
and simple food, are necessary and aboriginal conditions of
the life of our race, and they are necessary and aboriginal
conditions of health. The doctor who does not start from
these as the basis of his prescriptions does not know his
work. The modern money4endeF, man of stocks, or what-
ever you call him, and his family, live in the continual
violation of these conditions. They get up late, are mostly
indoors, do little or no physical work, arid take quantities of
rich and greasy food and stimulants. Such as would exhaust
the stomach of a strong man, but which to them, in their
already enervated state, are simply fatal. Hence a long
catalogue of evils, ever branching into more. Hence dys-
pepsia, nerves, liver, sexual degeneracies, and general de-
pression of vitality ; a gloomy train, but whose drawn
features you will recognise if you peep into almost any one of
those desirable mansions Of which I have spoken. A terrible
symptom of our well-to-do (?) modern life is this want

* It must be noticed that the working masses of our great towns do not by
any means fulfil this condition. Thrust down into squalor by the very effort of
others climbing to luxury, the unnaturalness and misery of their lives is the direct
counterpart and inseparable accompaniment of the unnaturalness of the lives of the
rich. That the great masses ot our population to-day are in this unhealthy state
does not however disprove the statement in the text— /.^., that the vast majority
-of mankind must live Iq direct contact with Nature— rather it would indicate that
the present conditions can only be of brief duration.

76 DESIRABLE MANSIONS.

of health, and one which presses for serious attention.
There is only one remedy for it; but that remedy is a
sure one — the return (or advance) to a simpler mode of
existence.

What is the upshot of all this ? There was a time when
the rich man had duties attending his wealth. The lord or
baron was a petty king, and had kingly responsibilities as
well as power. The Sir Roger, of Addison's time, was the
succeeding type of landlord. And even to the present day
there lingers here and there a country squire who fulfils that
now antiquated ideal of kindly condescension and patronage.
But the modern rush of steam-engines, and the creation of
an enormous class of wealthy folk living on stocks, have
completely subverted the old order. It has let loose on
society a horde of wolves ! — a horde of people who have no
duties attaching to their mode of life, no responsibility.
They roam hither and thither, seeking whom and what they
may devour. Personally I have no objection to criminals,
ani think them quite as good as myself. But, Talk of
criminal classes — can there be a doubt that the criminal
classes /«/• excellence m our modern society are this horde of
stock and share-mongers ? If to be a criminal is to be an
enemy of society, then they are such. For their mode .of
life is founded on the principle of taking without giving, of
claiming withoLit earning — as much as that of any common
thief. It is in vain to try and make amends for this by
charity organisations and unpaid magistracies. The cure
must go deeper. It is no good trying to set straight the roof
and chimneys, when the whole foundation is aslant. These
good people are not boarded and lodged at Her Majesty's
pleasure, but the Eternal Justice, unslumbering, causes them
to build prisons (as I have said) for themselves — plagues
them with ill-health and divers unseen evils — and will and
must plague them, till such time as they shall abandon the im-

DESIRABLE MANSIONS. 77

possible task they have set themselves, and return to the
paths of reason.

The whole foundation is aslant — and aslip^ as anyone may
see who looks. In short, it is an age of transition. No
mortal power could make durable a Society founded on
Usury — universal and boundless usury. The very words
scream at each other. The baron has passed away ; and the
landlord is passing. They each had their duties, and while
they fulfilled them served their time well and faithfully.
The shareholder has no duties, and is miserable, and will
remain so till the final landslip, when, the foundations having
completely given way, he will crawl forth out of the ruins of
, his desirable mansion into the life and light of a new day.
Less oracular than this I dare not be ! As I have
said before there is no conceivable condition of life in
which the human soul may not find the materials of its
surpassing deliverance from evil and mortality. And I for
one would not, if I had the power, cramp human life into
the exhibition of one universal routine. If anyone desires to
be rich, if anyone desires to gradually shut himself off from
the world, to build walls and fences, to live in a house where
it is impossible to get a breath of fresh air without going
through half a dozen doors, and to be the prisoner of his
own servants ; if he desires it so that when he walks down
the street he cannot whistle or sing, or shout across the road
to a friend, or sit upon a doorstep when tired, or take off his
coat if it be hot, but must wear certain particular clothes in
a certain particular way, and be on such pins and needles as
to what he may or may not do, that he is right glad when he
gets back again to his own prison walls ; if he loves trustee-
ships and Egyptian bonds, and visits from the lawyer, and
feels glad when he finds a letter from the High Court of
Chancery on his breakfast table, and experiences in attend-
ing to all these things that satisfaction which comes of all

78 DESIRABLE MANSIONS.

honest work; if he feels renovated and braced by lying in
bed of a morning, and by eating feast dinners evjery day, and
by carefully abstaining from any bodily labor ; if dyspepsia
and gout and biliousness and distress of nerves are not
otherwise than grateful to him ; and if he can obtain all
these things without doing grievous wrong to others^ by all
means let him have them,

Only for those who do not know what they desire I would
lift up the red flag of warning. Only of that vast and ever
vaster horde which to-day (chiefly,.! cannot but think, in
ignorance) rushes to Stocks, would I ask a moment's pause,
and to look at the bare facts. If these words should come
to the eye of such an one I would pray hin\ to think for a
moment — to glance at this great enthroned Wrong in its
dungeon palace (not the less a wrong because the laws coun-
tenance and encourage it) — to listen for the cry of the home-
less many, trodden under foot, a yearly sacrifice to it — to
watch the self-inflicted sufferings of its worshipers, the
ennui, the depression, the unlovely faces of ill-health, to
observe the falsehood on which it is founded, and therefore
the falsehood, the futility, the unbelief in God or Man which
spring out of it — and to turn away, determined, as far as in
him lies, to worship in that Dagon-house no longer.

SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE.

** As I preforred soms thing? to others, and especially valued ;ni^. freedom, as I
could fare hard and yet succeed well, I did not wish to spend my tnne in earning
rich carpets or other fine furniture, or delicate -cookAry, or^a.house.ia the Grecian
or the Gothic style just yet. If there are any to whom it is no interruption to
acquire these things, and whok|ip^.h9w to use, them when acquired, I: relinquish
to them the pursuit." — Thoreau,

Certainly, if you do not want to be a vampire and a para-
site upon others, the great question ofc practical life, and
which everyone has to- face, is how to carry it on with as
little labor and effort as may be. No one wants to labor
needlessly, and if you havfi to earn everything you spend,
economy becomes a= very personal question — not neces-
sarily in the pinching sense, but merely as adaptation of
means to the end. When I came some years ago to live
with cottagers (earning say -^50 to ;£'6o a year) and share
their life, I was surprised to find how little both in labor
and expense their food cost them, who were doing far more
work than I was, or indeed the generality of people among
whom I had been living. This led me to see that the rich
dinners and expensive mode of living I had been accus-
tomed to were a mere waste, as far as ad^iptation to any
useful end was concerned ; and afterwards I decided that
they had been a positive hindrance, for when I became
habituated to a more simple diet I found that a marked
improvement took place in my powers both of mind and
body. At a later time when keeping house myself (still on
the same scale, though with a little more latitude owing to
79

8o SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE.

visitors) and having, during a short time, to buy every
article of food, I found that the expenses for a family of
four persons were well under 8d. a head per diem, not in-
cluding firing or labor of cooking. And now I am in-
clined to consider this needlessly large.

The difference, however, arising from having a small
piece of garden is very great, and makes one feel
how important it is that every cottage should have
a plot of ground attached. A rood of land (quarter
acre) is sufficient to grow all potatos and other vege-
tables and some fruit for the years use, say for a family of
five. Half an acre would be an ample allowance. Such a
piece of land may easily be cultivated by anyone in the
odd hours of regular work, and the saving is naturally large
from not having to go to the shop for everything of this
nature that is needed. At the present time — October, 1885
— when growing all fruit and vegetables, eggs also, for our
own use, I find that our entire expenses for provisions (in-
cluding flour, meat, milk, butter, groceries, sugar for pre-
serving, etc.) amount to 5d. a head per day. The flour-bill
(baking done at home) is about id. per day each, and some
portion of this — though I am not in a position at present to
say exactly how much — is saved when we grow our own
wheat. As a matter of practical interest I find that an acre
of wheat in a fairly good year (say 10 ** bags," or 180 stone)
will provide a year's bread for a family of five. Anyone
having a horse will of course find it economical to use it with
the plough ; but I am inclined to think that a cottager
with a little more land than he would want for his garden
and with a little spare time, would find it worth while to
spade up half an acre or so (he would get a rare crop in
this way) and grow wheat on it. However, not having
tried this plan myself. 1 will not do more than just to suggest
it. A small hand-mill in the house serves with little labor

SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE. 8 1

to produce the whole-meal flour, but for white flour the
corn must be sent to the miller.

While on this question of wheat I may remark that an
impression seems to have got abroad that England is not a
good wheat-producing country; but surely there is no
ground for this. English grain is actually finer than the
American grain, and the yield per acre on our farms is
larger. As soon as ever we tried our own flour we found
(really to our surprise) that the quality of bread was quite
superior to what we had been accustomed to from the
bought meal, and this in a district — the Derbyshire dales
— by no means so well suited for corn growing as most
parts of England. This purer taste of the bread may, how-
ever, have been partly due to the fact that millers and
flour-dealers are in the habit of mixing diflerent sorts and
qualities of flour together (even if they do not adulterate
with other substances), much as tea-blenders mix tea,
and thus our bread of commerce, like everything else com-
mercial, is sophisticated. The only serious drawback
to English wheat is that in some rainy seasons the grain
is not so dry as it should be — but millers, it must be
remembered, have drying-floors. Undoubtedly the pro-
duction of wheat in England is just now at a discount be-
cause of the extraordinary low-pricedness of the American
wheat ; but then it should be noted that the Enghsh farmer
is frightfully burdened by our landlord system as well as
by heavy rates and taxes. Whatever may be said about
rent not entering into cost of production, and though the
theory abstractly considered is a pretty one, yet in practice
in England I believe it will be found to apply only very
partially. The landlord is on the top of the farmer and
has the advantage of him in every way. The latter is loth
to leave the place on which he, and perhaps his ancestors
before him, have lived so long, and to incur the disastrous

G

82 SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE.

expenses of a change ; " hope springs eternal " and " though
the seasons have been bad they may be better in the
future ; " then the available amount of land in the country
is limited, there is always a large portion of the town popu-
lation ready to try its hand at agriculture, if only as a
hobby and in the face of probable loss ; building specula-
tions, favorableness of sites for ornamental estates, etc.,
re-act on agricultural rents ; and though it is contended
that all these things adjust themselves in tinie^ yet it is just
there that the difficulty arises. For during the time so
required the actual conditions of the problem change; the
prices, the cost of production, the situation of the " margin
of cultivation " fluctuate, and their adjustment to rent in
each particular case has to be re-discovered each year.
The problem practically never is solved, but is deferred in-
definitely ; the landlord continues to reap the advantage of
his strong and entrenched position, and the successive
generations of burdened farmers, losing all their capital,
and what is even more, all heart and courage, neglect their
land, and widespread impoverishment, as now, ensues.
This, being so, seems obviously a matter requiring imme-
diate attention, for it must always be an object of first-class
importance to a country to produce the staple articles of its
•own food ; and if we find that our wheat production is
hampered even in a small degree by the obstruction of a
privileged class, such obstruction ought to be removed as
quickly as possible. Personally I am inclined to think, look-
ing at all the details of the case and the indirect as well as
direct influences, that this obstruction is not a small matter,
and that if it does not account for the entire difficulty which
our farmers have in contending with American prices it
accounts for a large part of it, and is therefore a subject more
serious and worthy of attention from our statesmen than for
instance the opening up of newmarkets by petty foreign wars.

SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE. 83

To return to the question of domestic economy. Of
course the current mode of life is so greatly wasteful, and
we have come to consider so many things as necessaries —
whether in food, furniture, clothing, or what not — ^which
really bring us back next to no profit or pleasure compared
with the labor spent upon them, that it is really difficult to
know where the balance of true economy would stand if,
so to speak, left to itself. All we can do is to take the ex-
isting mode of life in its simpler forms, somewhat as above,
and work from that as a basis. For though the cottager's
way of living, say in our rural districts or in the neighbor-
hood of our large towns, is vastly superior to that of the
well-to-do, that does not argue that it is not capable of
improvement.

About the largest account in most modern households is
the butcher's. I find that our bill runs up to ;£^io a year,
and this is less than in the Royal Household, where it
reaches ;£^9,472. If our princes and their attendants were
to adopt a more frugal diet (say like that of the Caliph
Omar, who rode from Medina to Jerusalem with a bag of
dates and a bag of corn at his saddle-bow), they would pro-
bably be quite as cheerful and healthy as now, and there
would be a great saving to the nation !

The causes of the craving for a meat diet seem to be
similar to those of the craving for other stimulants. For
though flesh is not generally considered a stimulant, a little
attention will show that its action is of like nature. It very
quickly produces a sense of well-being, liable to be followed
by reaction and depression; and this action, though
innocuous in its smaller degrees, becomes seriously harm-
ful when flesh is made a staple article of diet. With regard
to the healthfulness of stimulants generally I am inclined
to think that as long as they are merely used for pleasures
sake (sociality and good-fellowship) they are right enough,
G— 2

r

84 SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE.

and in place ; but as soon as ever they go so far as to
become necessities, and the man learns to lean on them for
support, or thinks that he cannot do without them, from
that moment they are harmful and lowering to the system.
The question of meat involves, of course, the additional
question of our moral or sentimental relation to the animals.
Probably the great craving for all these things goes with
our present conditions of civilisation. The hurry, the
overwork — or xdLthox fet'erish work — of modern life; the
bad air — as of women all along in the house, or men in a
close workshop ; the unnatural stimulations, in sexual
affairs as in everything else ; and above all the hyper-
sensitiveness of our women, who, having abandoned out-
door life and labor, transmit a feebly nervous organism
to the race : — all these things produce a craving for artifi-
cial supports. The man cannot walk and must have
crutches; and the crutches in their turn atrophise the
limbs.

On the whole, and for habitual use, I do not know what
can be pleasanter or more nourishing than the cereals (rice,
wheat, &c.), milk, eggs, cheese, bread, butter, and any
fruit or vegetables that come handy ; and they seem to me
to stand by one for hard work and endurance better than
flesh. Less than a pennyworth of oatmeal will make one
person a large dish of porridge, and this with an tgg, or
some cheese and a little fruit, will form a first-class dinner.
As to the fearful and wonderful receipts contained in the
cookery books, the formula — Senfe up hot and throw out of
the window — might, with advantage, be appended to most
of them. I am convinced there is a most abominable and
idiotic waste of time in connection with this subject in all
our well-to-do establishments. If the pleasure given bore
any proportion lo the expenditure of time and labor there
might be some sense in the matter, but it doesn't. Fancy

SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE. 85

a small household of five or six persons requiring a cook —
i.e.y a person engaged all day long in preparing food for
them. Is it not out of all reason? But the mistress of
the house descends as it were from the skies, "orders
dinner," and returns again to her celestial abode. Whether
it was worth while that the scullery-maid should be sent
scouring round the town, that she should return hot and
tired, and quarrel with the cook-^that saucepans should be
soiled, much time consumed in peeling, and some money
wasted — all in order that unseasonable shrimps should be
made into indigestible sauce and served up with the fish,
is a question which does not enter into her (the mistress's)
head as she takes an infinitesimal portion of the said sauce
upon her plate.

Once I had the honor of staying in a country house for
a few days as a guest of one of the servants, and the view
which I thus got of our social arrangements — from that
side I suppose from which Moses saw the Almighty — was
very curious and interesting.

The orthodox dinner, reduced even to its lowest terms,
involves say meat, two vegetables, and a pudding — four
dishes, all requiring cooking ! The labor this represents
per annum, and just for one meal a day, is something fear-
ful. And it is not a comfortable mealj let alone the
disagreeable smells involved in its preparation — smells
which necessitate sitting-rooms being a long way from
kitchens, and houses altogether more extensive and cum-
brous than they need be — it is a meal having no centre of
gravity ; you cannot for the life of you tell the proper pro-
portion these dishes bear to each other.

Would it not be better to have just one dish — (like the
family bowl seen in Highland cabins and elsewhere) — one
dish combining in itself all needful qualities of nutrition
and tastiness, with perhaps a few satellite platters around

86 SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE.

for any adjuncts or off-sets that might seem appropriate ?
This central dish (the only one requiring immediate
cookery) say some golden-orbed substantial omelet, or
vast vegetable pie, or savoury and nutritious soup, or solid
expanse of macaroni and cheese, or steaming mountain of
rice surrounded by stewed fruit, or even plain bowl of
fermenty, would represent the sun or central fire of our
system, while round it in planetary order would circle such
other useful and inexpensive viands as would give the
housewife a minimum of trouble to provide — chunks of
bread and cheese, figs, raisins, oatmeal cakes, fresh fruit,
or what not. Here would no second relay of plates be
necessary, and victuals which could not face each other on
the table would not be forced into spiteful conflict within
the man. Even the knife and fork would almost dis-
appear, washing up would become an affair of a few
minutes, and the woman's work before and after dinner be
reduced to a trifle compared with what it is now. For it
must be remembered that with this whole matter hangs
the question of women's work. Woman is a slave, and
must remain so as long as ever our present domestic system
is maintained. I say that our average mode of life, as con-
ceived under the bourgeois ideal of society, cannot be kept
up without perpetuating the slavery of woman. It is quite
probable that in the mass she will resist the change ; but it
may have to come nevertheless.

As to the general question of eating, I am inclined to
think that, as in other matters, though moderation is the
best general rule, this has to be varied by an occasional
orgy. For pleasure in the . long run, health, economy of
force, &c, a certain sparingness is to be recommended;
but the orgy should not be omitted. Among other things
it restores the moral tone, and prevents — a most important
point — all danger of lapse into pharisaism. Probably if

\

SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE. 87

people nowadays had to slaughter for their own use the
difficulty would be to get them to '* kill the fatted calf/''
On my little farm we have fowls in plenty, but we cannot
get one for dinner, simply because no member of the
household is sufficiently goaded by hunger to be willing to
perform the sacrifice : and so Peggy and Fluffy, though
old, are respited from month to month, or taken to market
— such is human inconsistency ! — to be killed ultimately by
some one else.

No doubt immense simplifications of our daily life are
possible ; but this does not seem to be a matter which has
been much studied. Rather hitherto the tendency has
been all the other way, and every additional ornament on
the mantel-piece has been regarded as an acquisition, and
not as a nuisance ; though one doesn't see any reason, in
the nature of things, why it should be regarded as one more
than the other. It cannot be too often remembered that
every additional object in a house requires additional dust-
ing, cleaning, repairing, and lucky are you if its require-
ments stop there. When you abandon a wholesome tile
or stone floor for a Turkey carpet, you are setting out on a
voyage of which you cannot see the end. The Turkey
carpet makes the old furniture look uncomfortable, and
calls for stuffed couches and armchairs, the couches and
armchairs demand a walnutwood table ; the walnutwood
table requires polishing, and the polish bottles require
shelves; the couches and armchairs have castors and.
springs — which give way and want mending ; they have-
damask seats which fade and must be covered ; the chintz
covers require washing, and when washed they call for
antimacassars to keep them clean. The antimacassars,
require wool, and the wool requires knitting-needles, and
the knitting-needless require a box, the box demands a
side-table to stand on, and the side-table involves more

88 SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE.

covers and castors — and so we go on. Meanwhile the
carpet wears out and has to be supplemented by bits of
drugget, or eked out with oilcloth, and, beside the daily
toil required to keep this mass of rubbish in order, we have
every week or month, instead of the pleasant cleaning-day
of old times, a terrible domestic convulsion and bouleverse-
meni of the household.

It is said by those who have travelled in Arabia that the
reason why there are so many religious enthusiasts in that
country, is that in the extreme simplicity of the life and uni-
formity of the landscape there heaven — in the form of the
intense blue sky — seems close upon one. One may almost
see God. But we moderns guard ourselves effectually against
this danger. For beside the smoke pall which covers our
towns, we raise in each household such a dust of trivialities
that our attention is fairly absorbed, and if this screen sub-
sides for a moment we are sure to have the daily paper held
up before our eyes— so that if a chariot of fire were sent to
fetch us, ten to one we should not see it.

However, if this multiplying of the complexity of life is
really grateful to some people, one cannot quarrel with them
for pursuing it ; and to many it appears to be so. When a
sewing machine is introduced into a household the simple-
minded husband thinks that, as it works ten times as quick
as the hand, there will now be only a tenth part of the
time spent by his wife and daughter in sewing that there
was before. But he is ignorant of human nature. To his
surprise he finds that there is no difference in the time.
The difference is in the flounces — they put ten times as
many on their dresses.

Thus we see how little external reforms avail. If the
desire for simplicity is not really present no labor-saving
appliances will make Hfe simpler.

Talking about floors, it seems a good plan in upper

N

SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE. 89

chambers, and rooms where floors are boarded, to stain and
varnish them. This is not expensive, but it takes a little
time — two or three days altogether for the different washes
to dry ; first the stain, then a wash of size, /.<?., diluted glue,
and then the oak varnish. There is a varnish now com-
monly sold called brush varnish, which dries very quickly, in
a few hours, and does not require any size ; but it is hardly
so good and durable as the other. The advantage of
varnished floors is that they do not require scrubbing,
which is a very laborious process, but only to be rubbed
over with a damp cloth. One or two rugs, or bits of
carpet, are all that is needed for a covering, and these can
be easily taken up and shaken and the room swept at the
weekly cleaning. A carpet over the whole floor not only
smells badly, and makes the air of the room permanently
stuffy, but, being difficult to remove, it remains down for
months at a time, and harbors all sorts of dirt. Varnished
floors however will not stand heavy work, as in a living-
room or kitchen where thick boots are in and out all day ;
and here stone or tile floors, with cocoa-nut matting if
a covering is wanted, always seems to me the most
appropriate.

The rest of the furniture takes its cue very much from
the treatment of the floor. As a rule all curtains, hangings,
cloths, and covers, which are not absolutely necessary,
should be dispensed with. They all create dust and stuffi-
ness, and all entail trouble and recurring expense, and they
all tempt the housekeeper to keep out the air and sunlight
— two things of the last and most vital importance. I like
a room which looks its best when the sun streams into it
through wide open windows and doors. If the furnishing
of it cannot stand this test — if it looks uncomfortable under
the operation — you may be sure there is something un-
wholesome about it. As to the question of elegance or

>

90 SIMPLIFICATION OF LI^E.

adornment, that may safely be left to itself. The studied
effort to make interiors elegant has only ended — in what we
see. After all, if things are in their place they will always
look well. What, by common consent, is more graceful
than a ship — the sails, the spars, the rigging, the lines of
the hull ? Yet go on board and you will scarcely find one
thing placed there for the purpose of adornment. An
imperious necessity rules everything ; this rope could have
no other place than it has, nor could be less thick or
thicker than it is; and it is, in fact, this necessity which
makes the ship beautiful. Everything in it has relation —
has relation to the winds and waves, or to something else
on board, and is there for purposes beyond its own exis-
tence. Or again, after you have been the round of aestheti-
cally-furnished mansions, and seen all that taste and wealth
can do in this direction, does it not happen to you at last
to turn by chance into some old-fashioned cottage by the
wayside and find that, for pure grace and beauty, this
interior, without the least effort or intention whatever, has
beaten all the rest hollow? Yet, with the exception
perhaps of a few plants in the window, everything here is
for use. The eye rests on nothing but what suggests a train
of thought. Here is the axe hanging, there the gun ; here
over the dresser a row of plates, there the kettle boiling on
the fire ; and there, behind the door, the straw hat which
the rosy-cheeked girl puts on when she runs out to look to
the fowls. Everything is alive, and transparent too with
cleanly human life. But your modern drawing-room is
dead — a stupor comes over the mind as it gazes at the aim-
less armchairs, and the room seems full of lumber. You
cannot make your room beautiful by buying an expensive
vase and putting it on the mantel-shelf ; but if you live an
honest life in it, it will grow beautiful in proportion as it
comes to answer to the wants of*such a life.

SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE. 9 1

The treatment of walls is a somewhat vexed question.
Some people prefer paper, while others prefer a color-wash
or paint. On the whole there always seems to me some-
thing incongruous and even trivial in the idea of papering
stone and plaster. Color-washes are clean and sweet ;
they are made of whitening with a little size \flour and
water) mixed to prevent rubbing off, and coloring matter
according to choice. They are of course quite inexpensive
and can be renewed every two or three years. Paint has
the advantage of being very durable and of being washable,
but it has the drawback of being more laborious and costly
in operation, and of course renders a room uninhabitable for
a week or two till it is thoroughly dry. In fact care should be
taken with regard to this last point. On the whole I think
papering is the least trouble, color-washing the least ex-
pensive in materials, and paint perhaps the most satisfactory
in the long run. If, however, a room is really well plastered
to begin with (which does not often happen nowadays) one
may very well dispense with all three methods, and that is
perhaps after all the most obvious thing to do.

With regard to clothing, as with furniture and the other
things, it can be much simplified if one only desires it so.
Probably, however, most people do not desire it, and of course
they are right in keeping to the complications. Who knows
but what there is some influence at work for some ulterior
purpose which we do not guess, causing us to artificialise
our lives to the extraordinary extent we do in modern
times ? Our ancestors wore woad, and it does not at first
sight seem obvious why we should not do the same. With-
out however entering into the woad question, we may
consider some ways in which clothing may be simpli-
fied without departing far from the existing standard. It
seems to be generally admitted now that wool is the most
suitable material as a rule. I find that a good woollen coat,

92 SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE.

such as ordinarily worn, feels warmer when unlined than it
does when a layer of silk or cotton is interposed between the
woollen surface and the body. It is also lighter, thus in
both ways the simplification is a gain. Another advantage
is that it washes easier and better, and is at all times cleaner,
No one who has had the curiosity once to unpick the lining
of a tailor-made coat that has been in wear a little time,
will, I think, ever wish to have coats made on the same
principle again. The rubbish he will find inside, the fret-
tings and frayings of the cloth collected in little dirt-heaps
up and down, the paddings of cotton wool, the odd lots of
miscellaneous stuff used as backings, the quantity of canvas
stiffening, the tags and paraphernalia connected with the
pockets, bits of buckram inserted here and there to make
the coat " sit '* well — all these things will be a warning to
him. What would be shamed by exposure to the light is
all covered up by a sham decorous lining, and if the mess
looks unwholesome and suggestive of disease in a compara-
tively new coat made by a well-to-do tailor, what must it
be in the case of a coat made up by a cheap and nasty
dealer, or one that has been unwashed (and how can one
wash such a thing ?) for years ?

Now if all these tags are done away with, and a coat is
made up of good cloth* without any lining whatever or any
stiffening (except a patch here and there where the buttons
are sewn on), and with pockets simply made by the addi-
tion of another patch of cloth — patch-pockets as they are
called — the relief and the sense of added comfort, warmth,
lightness, cleanliness are really delightful. The truth is
that one might almost as well be in one's coffin as in the
stiff layers upon layers of buckram-like clothing commonly
worn nowadays. No genial influence from air or sky can

* Mrs. Jarvis Barber, of Abbeydale, near Sheffield, is now organising the pro-
duction ot hand-spun and hand-woven cloths, of undyed wool, both beautiful and
durable ; and will be happy to take orders for the same.

SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE. 93

pierce this dead hide, no effluence from within escape. A
man's clothing we will say generally consists round his
trunk of undervest, shirt, waistcoat and coat, to which must
spmetimes be added an overcoat — each of the three last-
mentioned garments consists, at any rate over the front of
the body, of three thicknesses— cloth, canvas-stiffening, and
lining — in all eleven layers. Eleven layers between him
and God ! No wonder the Arabian has the advantage over
us. Who could be inspired under all this weight of tailor-
dom?

And certainly, nowadays, many folk visibly are in their
coffins. Only the head and the hands out, all the rest of
the body clearly sickly with want of light and air, atro-
phied, stiff in the joints, strait-waistcoated, and partially
mummied. Sometimes it seems to me that is the reason
why in our modern times the curious intellect is so abnor-
mally developed, the brain and the tongue waggle so, and
fingers are so nervous and meddlesome, because these
organs alone have a chance, the rest are shut out from
God's light and air: the poor human heart grown feeble
and weary in its isolation and imprisonment, the sexual
parts degenerated and ashamed of themselves, the liver
diseased, and the lungs straitened down to mere sighs and
conventional disconsolate sounds beneath their cerements.
But a good woollen shirt and coat, and pants of similar
material, are really all a man needs for ordinary wear in
our climate — three garments, all simply made, easily wash-
able, and often washed. In quite cold weather a waistcoat
can be added, which should also be unlined and with the
back made out of cloth the same as the front. Thus even
when a greatcoat is worn the maximum will be only four
thicknesses over the body instead of eleven, while the
normal covering will be two layers instead of eight. The
warmth will be just as great as before, but the suffocation

94 SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE.

and mummydom will be less; we shall be nearer the
sources of life, and may possibly even hear spoken to us
the words : " Lazarus, come forth ! "

As to the feet which have been condemned to their
leathern coffins so long that we are almost ashamed to look
at them, there is still surely a resurrection possible for
them. There seems to be no reason except mere habit
why, for a large part of the year at least, we should not go
barefoot, as the Irish do, or at least with sandals.* [Demo-
cracy which redeems the lowest and most despised of the
people, must redeem also the most menial and despised
members and organs of the body.] Even now, effeminated
as our feet are, it takes but little practice to accustom them
to country roads ; in our towns with their excellent pave-
ments the custom might in summer time be adopted at
once. And who does not know the pleasure of grasping
the ground — the bare earth — with his bare feet ? If it be
objected that it is really impossible to imagine our modern
life carried on on such principles — the brokers on the
London Stock Exchange hurrying around, or the visitor
appearing at a fashionable afternoon tea, in bare feet (!)
— this is not a serious argument ; because if the two things
are really incompatible, it is quite possible that in the long
run the Stock Exchange business may turn out to be the
less important of the two — less grounded in the ultimate
necessity of things than the freedom and emancipation of a
single member of the human body ; and so the little toe,
like the proverbial worm, though nearly crushed, may at
last turn and revenge itself on a civihsation whose oppres-
sion it has too long endured.

But, as we are talking about economy, what a saving of
labor and expense would be effected by dispensing, if

*Mr. W, A. Lill, of 37, Margaret Street, Sheffield, is willing to supply an elegant
and useful form of sandal. The '* size " of boot worn is ail that is required, and the
word •* broad," "narrow," or "medium** to indicate the character of the foot.

SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE. 95

only for six months out of the year, with shoes and stock-
ings? The labor involved in merely darning the latter
is really a serious item in household life. Though scoffed
at by the male part of the community, as beneath their
notice — this labor is only another of the links in the chain
which binds the women folk down. Again, who does not
know the time which is spent, in any self-supporting house-
hold, in patching and mending the numerous garments
worn, putting in fresh linings and renewing pockets ? — time
which might be largely saved if the number of garments
was much reduced, and their construction altogether
simplified from the beginning. Thus, all through for men
and similarly for women, a simplification of dress might be
adopted — even without departing far from present modes
— which would involve far less initial expense, and far less
labor of maintenance than the present plan. And if these
things seem trivial to some well-bred person, who is in the
habit of saying, like the Centurion in the Bible, to his
servant : — " Do this, and he doeth it " — we must remember
as was said at the outset, that in any honest household,
faithfully providing for its own wants, such matters have to
be faced. The husband has out of his labor to provide
the initial expense, the wife has to do the most part of the
work of repair and renewal, and to such people the affair is
is not trivial at all. Rather one might say that if educated
and wealthy people would set the example of simplifying
these things to the utmost in their own persons, they would
do more to lighten the burden of life for the mass of the
people than they can expect to do by casually plunging their
hands into their pockets in aid of some Charity.

There are many other ways in which the details and
labor of daily life may be advantageously reduced, which
will occur to anyone who turns practical attention to the
matter. For myself, I confess to a great pleasure in wit-

96 SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE.

nessing the Economies of Life — and how seemingly nothing
need be wasted — how the very stones that offend the spade
in the garden become invaluable when footpaths have to be
laid out or drains to be made. Hats that are past wear get
cut up into strips for nailing creepers to the wall, the upper
leathers of old shoes are useful for the same purpose. The
under garment that is too far gone for mending is used for
patching another less decrepit of its kind. Then it is torn
up into strips for bandages, or what not ; and when it has
served its time thus it descends to floor washing, and is
scrubbed out of life — useful to the end. When my coat
has worn itself into an affectionate intimacy with my body,
when it has served for Sunday best, and for weekdays, and
got weather-stained out in the fields with sun and rain —
then, faithful, it does not part from me, but getting itself
cut up into shreds and patches descends to form a hearthrug
for my feet. After that, when worn through, it goes into
the kennel and keeps my dog warm, and so after lapse of
years, retiring to the manure-heaps and passing out on to
the land, returns to me in the form of potatos for my
dinner ; or being pastured by my sheep reappears • upon
their backs as the material of new clothing. Thus it re-
mains a friend to all time, grateful to me for not having
despised and thrown it away when it first got behind the
fashions. And seeing we have been faithful to each other,
my coat and I, lor one round or life-period, I do not see
why we should not renew our intimacy — in other meta-
morphoses — or why we should ever quite lose touch of each
other through the aeons.

With regard to the sum total of labor required for the
maintenance of a household according to modern notions,
I find on my little farm of seven acres (which is by no
means conducted on model principles, but in a very
ordinary way) that the figures fDr last financial year (Sep-

SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE. 97

tember, '84-*85) run as follows : — Number of persons,
rather over four on the average ; household expenses (in-
cluding provisions and utensils, but not clothing or personal
expenses), ;f 38 ; farm expenses, /.^., seeds, tools, manure
&c., ;^i5 ; taxes, ;£6 ; close upon ^60 in all. I consider
that the farm and market garden could easily be worked by
a man and his family, say having a son of fifteen to help him,
with just occasional outside help. And the question then
would be for them to sell stuff sufficient to cover the above
outlay aijd leave a margin for pocket money and renf (pay-
able we should hope to the nation and not to any indivi-
dual landlord). This they ought to do, and probably would
do without difficulty in times of average prices. What
exact niargin might be expected, or what exact extent of
land would yield the best results, are questions- which I
should find it difficult to answer ; all such points depend so
very much on considerations of soil, locality, kinds of crop
grown, whether ordinary or highly specialised, the state of
the markets, &c., that it seems rash and indeed impossible
to generalise on them. Personally I feel so very strongly
that the present conditions of commercial production are
rapidly passing away, that I don't think it very much matters
whether the peasant occupier (or any other worker or indus-
trial adventurer) is proved to be a commercial success or a
commercial failure just now. When the new conditions of
society enable the worker to receive something like an
equivalent of the value he produces* it is evident that the
question of success or failure will be a very different one
from what it is to-day.

What I feel more interested to show is the actual expense
— as in the figures given above — of carrying on a simple,
but unstinted, household life. For though some would

*Mr. Mulhall (Dictionary tjf Statistics) Rives, for 1883, our national produce of
wealth at value'" £1,265,000,000 ; number of families of producers, 4,639,000. Divid-
ing, we fiod Uutt^873 a year is the average value produced by each family

H

98 SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE.

consider these figures absurdly small, and others needlessly
large, yet on the whole they are probably not far from
\he average experience on the subject; and at any rate
I give them because I can vouch for their accuracy. Not
long ago a gentleman told me that he was anxious to
adopt a very simple mode of life, and to take a cottage with
plot of land to it, for himself and family, but was waiting
till he had saved money enough — ;£^i 5,000 7vas the sum he
mentioned — for the venture. I thought it was a pity he
should wait so long, if he was really so anxious about it
as evidently if he could scrape together only ;^ioo a year,
from any professional sources or out of dividends, or what
not, he would have amply sufficient for all casualties.

In the more or less socialistic state of society towards which
we seem to be trending, the normal condition would pro-
bably be for a man to have a cottage and sufficient land —
say not less than a rood — to grow a good deal of food for
his own use, while daily labor at a really adequate rate of
wages would be secured to him outside in workshop,
design-room, school, warehouse, or wherever it might be.
And this always seems to me, if properly managed, the
most satisfactory mode of life for the average man. It
avoids the uncertainties and anxieties of running a concern
of one's own. There is no reason why the wage-work
should not be done under pleasant and wholesome condi-
tions, the hours would not be long, and there would be a
home and land of one's own on which to expend super-
fluous energy. Thus, if we take the household expenses
at ;£^4o, including purchase of a few tools, &c., for the
garden, and rent (payable to the State and therefore no
taxes) at ;^io, we see that a family earning ^^loo a year
would have ample margin for clothing, pocket money, and
even travelling within reasonable limits — would be, in fact,
quite well off. But even under the present wasteful conditions

SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE. 99

of society, statistics show, as in the note on last page, that
the value created by each family of producers is over ;£^2 7o
a year. Allowing something then for the expenses of distri-
bution, organisation, &c., and allowing nothing for the im-
proved productiveness of labor under a better system —
we still see that the normal wage per annum may be placed
at something like ;^25o per family. This would be, of
course, under the supposition that the hours of labor re-
mained the same as they are now. In this respect, how-
ever, under any reasonable condition of society, a man
would be at liberty to exercise some choice. If he wished
to live very luxuriously, or had extraordinary expenses to
meet, he could continue working his nine or ten hours as
now ; if however his domestic wants were only about the
ordinary range they would easily be covered by the sum
{jQioo) we have mentioned, and then obviously four
hours a day would be sufficient ; while if single, and of
simple habits, he (or she) could do with less.

In the above sketch my object has been not so much to
put forward any theory of the conduct of daily life, or
to maintain that one method of Uving is of itself superior
to another, as to try and come at the facts connected with
the subject. In the long run every household has to sup-
port itself, the benefits and accommodations it receives
from Society have to be covered by the labor it expends
for Society. This cannot be got over. The present effort
of a large number of people to live^ on interest and divi-
dends, and so in a variety of ways on the labor of others^
is simply an effort to make water run up hill : it cannot last
very long. The balance then between the labor that you
consume and the labor that you expend may be struck in
many different ways, but it has to be struck ; and I have
been interested to bring together some materials for an
easy solution of the problem.
H— 2

k
^

DOES IT PAY?

" Who has been wise receives interest.*'

— JPait Whitman.

Having lately embarked in an agricultural enterprise on
a small scale, I confess I was somewhat disconcerted, if
not actually annoyed, by the persistency with which — from
the very outset and when I had been only two or three
months at work — I was met by the question at the head
of this paper. Not only sisters cousins and aunts but
relatives much more remote, and mere acquaintances, at
the very first suggestion that I was engaged in trade, always
plumped out with the query, Does it pay ? And this struck
me the more because though I knew the point was import-
ant, I had in the innocence of my heart fancied that there
might be other considerations of at least comparable weight.
But I soon found out my mistake ; for none of my well-to-
do friends asked whether the work I was doing was wanted,
or whether it would be useful to the community, or a means
of healthy hfe to those engaged in it, or whether it was
honest and of a kind that could be carried on without in-
terior defilement ; or even (except one or two) whether I
liked it, but always : does it pay ? I say my well-to-do
friends, because I couldn't help remarking that while the
workers generally asked me such questions as whether the
soil was good, or adapted to the purpose, the crops fine,
the water abundant, &c., it was always the rich who asked
the distinctively commercial question — a professional ques-
tion as it appeared to me, and which marked them as a
joo

DOES IT PAY? lOI

class, and their modes of thought. Not that I have any
quarrel with them for asking it, because the question is un-
doubtedly in some sense a very important one, and one
which has to be asked ; rather I ought to feel grateful and
indebted, because it forced me to think about a matter that
I had not properly considered before.

What then did it mean ? What was the exact sense of
the expression, does it pay ? as here used ? On enquiring
I found it came to this : " When you have subtracted from
your gross receipts all expenses for wages of labor,
materials, &c., is there a balance equivalent to four or five
per cent, on your outlay of capital ? If yes, it pays ; if no, it
doesn't,'' Clearly if the thing came up to this standard or
surpassed it, it was worthy of attention ; if it didn't it would
be dismissed as unimportant and soon be dropped and
abandoned. This was clear and definite, and at first I felt
greatly relieved to have arrived at so solid a conclusion.
But after a time, and carrying on the enterprise farther, I
am sorry to say that my ideas (for they have a great
tendency that way), again began to get misty, and I could
not feel sure that I had arrived at any certain principle of
action.

My difficulty was that I began to feel that even supposing
the concern only brought me in one per cent., it was quite
as likely as not that I should still stick to it. For I thought
that if I was happy in the life, and those working with me
were well-content too, and if there were children growing up
on the place under tolerably decent and healthy conditions,
and if we were cultivating genuine and useful products,
cabbages and apples or what not — that it might really pay
me better to get one per cent, for that result, even if it in-
volved living quite simply and inexpensively, than ten per
cent, with jangling and wrangling, over-worked and sad
faces round me, and dirty and deceptive stuff produced ;

I02 DOES IT PAY?

and that if I could afford it I might even think it worth
while to pay to keep the first stage going, rather than be paid
for the second.

I knew it was very foolish of me to think so, and bad
Political Economy, and I was heartily ashamed of myself,
but still I couldn't help it. I knew the P.E.'s would say
that if I disregarded the interest on my capital I should only
be disturbing natural adjustments, that my five per cent,
was an index of what was wanted, a kind of providential
arrangement harmonising my interest (literally) with that of
the mass of mankind, and that if I was getting only one per
cent, while others were sending in the same stuff from
France and getting ten per cent., it was clear that I was
wasting labor by trying to do here what could be done so
much more profitably somewhere else, and that I ought to
give way. This was what I knew they would say ; but then
from my own little experience I readily saw that the ten
per cent, profit might mean no superior advantage of labor
in that part, but merely superior grinding and oppression
of the laborer by the employer, superior disadvantage of
the laborer in fact \ and that if I gave way in its favor, I
should only be encouraging the extortion system. I should
be playing into the hands of some nefarious taskmaster in
another part of the industrial world, and by increasing his
profits should perhaps encourage others, still more un-
scrupulous, to undersell him, which of course they would
do by further exactions from the worker ; and so on and
on. I saw too that if I abandoned my enterprise, I should
have to discharge my workpeople, with great chance of
their getting no fresh employment, and to them I had
foolishly become quite attached ; which was another serious
trouble, but I could not help it.

And so in all this confusion of mind, and feeling quite
certain that I could not understand all the complexities of

DOES IT PAY? 103

the science of Political Economy myself, and having a
lurking suspicion that even the most able professors were
in the dark about some points, I began to wonder if the
most sensible and obvious thing to do were not just to try
and keep at least one little spot of earth clean : actually to
try and produce clean and unadulterated food, to en-
courage honest work, to cultivate decent and healthful con-
ditions for the workers, and useful products for the public,
and to maintain this state of affairs as long as I was able,
taking my chance of the pecuniary result to myself. It
would not be much, but it would be something, just a
little glimmer as it were in the darkness ; but if others did
the same, the illumination would increase, and after a time
perhaps we should all be able to see our way better.

I knew that this method of procedure would not be
" scientific '' — that it would be beginning at the wrong end
for that — but then as I have said I felt in despair about my
ever being clever enough really to understand the science —
and as to half-knowledge, that might be more misleading
than none. It was like the advice in the Bible, *' Seek ye
first the kingdom of. God, and his righteousness, and all
these things shall be added unto you," obviously irrational
and absurd, and any argument would expose the fallacy of
it, and yet I felt inclined to adopt it.

For when on the other hand I tried to make a start along
the ordinary lines, I found myself from the outset in a hope-
less bog ! I could not, for the life of me, tell how much I
ought to take as interest, and how much I ought to give
in wages — the increase of the former evidently depending
on the smallness of the latter. If I adopted just the current
rate of wages, there was nothing in that, for -I knew that
they represented a mere balance of extortion on the one
hand and despair on the other, and how could I take that
as my principle of action ? If I gave more than the current

104 DOES IT PAY?

rate I should very likely get no interest at all, and so be
consigned to perdition by all my well-to-do friends, includ-
ing the Professors of Political Economy ; while if I gave
less, I should certainly go to hell in my own eyes. And
though I pondered over this dilemma, or rather trilemma,
till I was sick of it, I never could see my way out
of it.

And then I reflected that even if I was lucky enough to
pitch on some'principle of wage-payment which would leave
a nice little balance of Interest — it was quite doubtful
whether I should feel any right to appropriate such balance
to my own use. That also was a great trouble. For I could
not help seeing that after taking my proportional payment for
my labors in the concern, and some small remuneration
for my care of superintendence, if I then appropriated a
considerable interest on the capital laid out, I should with-
out any extra work be much better off than my coadjutors.
And though the P. E.'s assured me this was all right, and
kind of providential, I had serious qualms, which, do what
I would, I could not shake off. I felt keenly that what
I should then be taking would only be so much subtracted
from the wages of these others, and that the knowledge of
this would disturb the straightforward relation between us,
and I should no longer be able to look them in the face.

I could not help seeing too that it was by means of this
general system of the appropriation of balances that a very
curious phenomenon was kept up — an enormous class, to
wit, living in idleness and luxury, they and their children
and their children's children, till they became quite incap-
able of doing anything for themselves or even of thinking
rightly about most things — tormented with incurable ennui,
and general imbecility and futility ; all art and literature,
which were the appendage of this class, being affected by a
kind of St. Vitus' dance; and the whole thing breaking out

>

DOES IT PAY? Io5

finally for want of any other occupation into a cuff and
collar cult, called respectability.

And then I began to see more clearly the meaning of the
question (asked by this class) — does it pay f — />., Can we
continue drawing from the people nourishment enough to
keep our St. Vitus' dance going ? I thought I saw a vision
of poor convulsed creatures, decked out in strange finery,
in continual antic dance peering in each other's faces, with
eager questioning as to whether the state of profits would
allow the same doleful occupation to go on for ever. And
all the more eager I saw them on account of the dim
wandering consciousness they had that the whole thing was
not natural and right, and the presentiment that it could
not last very long. And then 1 saw a vision of the new
society in which the appropriation of balances was not the
whole object of life ; but things were produced primarily
for the use and benefit of those who should consume them.
It was actually thought that it paid better to work on that
principle ; and strangely enough, the kingdom of heaven was
at the centre of that society— and the " other things " were
added unto it. But there was no respectability there, for
the balances that could be privately appropriated were not
large enough even to buy starch with, and a great many
people actually went without collars.

And so I saw that the eager question (in the particular
sense on which it had been asked me) was in fact a symptom
of the decay of the old Society — a kind of dying grin and
death-rattle of respectabihty — and that a new order, a new
life, was already preparing beneath the old, in which there
would be no need for it to be asked ; or if asked, then in
which it should be asked in a new sense.

TRADE.

"He likewise engaged in a pursuit disgraceful even in a private individual—
buying great quantities of goods and selling them again to advantage."

'^Suetonius concerning Vespasian.

I SUPPOSE the peculiar character of our commercial age —
its excellencies and its defects — can be as well studied in
the market as anywhere. The first time I stood behind my
own goods, and spread out peas and potatos, roses and
raspberries of my own growing to the eye of the customer,
I felt that I was passing behind a veil, many things were
becoming clear ! I had often been in the market as a buyer,
and had, I am sorry to say, been accustomed to look upon
the tradesman as a personification of artful wickedness —
one who combined with his fellows to defraud the public
and to take advantage of its innocence. But now I had
passed myself into that inner circle, and with what a different
eye did I regard the situation ! It seemed to me now that
it was the public which was at fault. I seemed to see at a
glance the original sinfulness of its disposition. How out
of its naughty old heart it suspected you always and always
of putting the bad stuff at the bottom of the basket ; how it
would beat you down shamelessly, if it could, to prices below
the zero of any possible remuneration to the grower ; how
it would handle fruit and flowers till all the delicate bloom
was gone, and then pass by with a scoff — (things, all of
which I had once done myself) ; and how, instead of desir-
ing to do as it would be done by, its one guiding fear, over-
ruling all lesser sentiments of honesty and humanity, was

lest it should be done as it would desire to do. Hitherto I
io6

TRADE. 107

had looked upon cheap goods as a blessing, but now I saw,
or seemed to see, that they meant general ruin. For cheap
goods meant low wages, scarcity of money ; meant hungry
faces going by, and hands fingering half-pence long and
anxiously before parting with them ; meant slow sales and
poor returns to the trader. While scarcity and high prices
seemed no longer the unmixed evil I had supposed, for
Hkely as not they were the indication of a brisk demand,
full pockets, and general prosperity.

Thus my change of position, from the front to the back
of a stall, wrought at once a considerable alteration in my
views of some social matters. I took a new view of the
world. My axiom was changed, and consequently a lot of
theorems which I thought were well established fell to pieces,
and became sadly invalid, I found the inner circle of the
market a vantage ground, too, for the study of human
nature. Here the buyers are the performers. They occupy
the arena, and are exposed to a considerable criticism
from behind the stalls. The seller, on the other hand, is
comparatively unobserved. The buyer eyes the straw-
berries, old bird though he be he cannot entirely hide the
gleam of his satisfaction at their appearance.

" How much ? " he asks carelessly. " Five shillings a
peck" is your equally careless reply. You know the fruit is
first rate. You know also that he knows it ; and he pro-
bably knows that you know that he knows it. " Eh, what
are you talking about ? " is his answer, and in assumed dis-
gust he goes off down the market. Presently you see him
coming back again ; he has been all round ; but as he goes
by, crafty he scarce glances at the coveted stuff. Not till
he has got to a safe distance, and to a spot where he thinks
he may stand unobserved does he turn again and measure
it over with his eye. Now then you are satisfied ; you
know that you are safe about those strawberries, and you

lo8 TRADE.

may give your attention to the sale of other things. You
know also (what is very important) that there is no better
fruit of the same kind and at the same price in the market.
Great is your triumph when, after some delay, your customer
returns (as he infallibly will do) and you are able to tell him
that the produce in question is all sold, or that the price has
risen !

On the whole though the maxims of business are not too
lofty, the thorough business people are the most satisfactory
to deal with. They waste no time in whatever higgling is
necessary, they know a little of both sides of the question,
and are inclined to treat you as a reasonable creature, and
are prompt and methodical. This carefully-dressed some-
what stout matron with curls looks a little old-fashioned, but
she has a shrewd eye and a kindly heart ; she keeps a shop,
and knows pretty well how prices stand both for buyer and
seller ; is pleasant to deal with, and not disinclined to put
her custom on a friendly and permanent footing. Here
comes a man who considers himself quite the boss of the
market — brisk and business-like, with extensive watch-chain,
and elegant flower in his button-bole ; he is a large dealer
and acts as if he were doing you the honor to be your
customer. Nevertheless one can get on with him ; but this
abominable Irishwoman who always turns up talking nine-
teen to the dozen, and wanting to beg everything at shame-
less prices, and then when the bargain is concluded asking
for this to be thrown in and that to be thrown in, is really
more than I can bear. Then there is an unpleasant-look-
ing ferret-eyed man who always suspects me of having put
the best potatos at the top ; I do not like him, and feel no
satisfaction in selling anything to him. But this little man
in carefully-brushed great-coat and tall hat is really a
pleasure to deal with. He is a retail customer and is quite
a Pickwickian study, has an immense red nose, which must

TRADE. 109

occupy nearly all his field of view, yet of drinking I am
sure he is blameless, so affable and scrupulous is he ; and
when he buys a peck of peas I feel certain he will take them
home and shell them sitting by his wife's side. There is
the working wife too, who wants a nice cauliflower for the
Sunday dinner, but ultimately declines on a cabbage on
account of the price ; and the young man who wants a
button-hole for his girl. He chooses the most lovely of the
rose-buds, but pauses when he hears what he has to pay
(for the season is advartced) — he retires for a moment, and
then comes forward like a man and secures his prize.

Those who know something about the labor of produc-
tion — either in the trade in question or in some other trade
— are often most reasonable to deal with. They can sym-
pathise to some extent with you. I find that the *^ lady "
or " gentleman " is often inclined to beat one down or refuse
a rational price out of mere ignorance — not knowing what
they ought to give, they assume that whatever you ask must
be an imposition. And of course, on the other hand, they
often are imposed upon by the unscrupulous. I confess
that I have been inclined to take this latter part myself.
There is a widespread impression among the " people " that
the wealthy class are lawful prey. Perhaps they are — it
might be difficult to decide one way or the other — but any-
how the gap or the want of sympathetic relation between
the two parties makes their dealings with one another un
satisfactory.

With regard to the higghng of the prices, and the law of
supply and demand, it is interesting to see how rapidly you
feel from your own particular stand the general state of the
market, how organically you seem to form a part of it. You
drive over the hills by sunrise, plunging down through the
clear light and by the dewy hedgerows into the still quiet
streets of the great city ; you find yourself in a bustling

no TRADE.

noisy market, you open out your goods, take a cursory
glance at the quantity of stuff in of various kinds, and
mentally fix on the probable prices. The stream of cus-
tomers flows by. " How much ? " " how much ? " " how
much?" Different as are the characters of the indivi-
duals comprising the crowd, various as are their little
dodges and artifices, the total effect is soon averaged. As
you reply to each, expressions of disgust or satisfaction
involuntarily pass over their faces, and in a few minutes
you know quite certainly how you stand — your little gland
which is washed by the general circulation soon gets con-
gested with traffic or left high and dry — and your relation to
the rest of the market is established.

I should be inclined to think that, unless it be the petro-
leum market, there is no market which fluctuates so
rapidly as the vegetable and fruit market. Frosts spoil
tons of cauliflowers, rain ruins acres of strawberries ; a few
fine days in spring will cause parsley to fall from three
shillings a pound to as many pence. From week to week
in some articles it is impossible to tell what the price will
be. You bring in a load of fine celery roots and the market
is glutted with celery, there are tons and tons in, and it is
as good as given away to the street-hawkers ; another day
it is just as scarce — everyone has held back — and poor stuff
fetches a good price. Even from hour to hour the varia-
tions are remarkable, some things will run out and run up,
other things will remain abundant to the very close of the
market, and have to be sold at last for a mere song. Quite
a class of small traders and hawkers lie in wait for this last
casualty, and make their living by buying what else would
be shot up on the manure heap. Still, though competition
thus holds sway and can, so to speak, be felt in operation,
it is difiicult to reduce the law of supply and demand to
anything like an absolute generalisation, or to make it

TRADE. Ill

practically applicable except in the roughest way. Custom,
which is a force antagonistic to competition, and which has
at one time undoubtedly been the main determinant of
prices — which is certainly one of the strongest forces of
human nature, and which will have to be reckoned with in
any forecast of the future adjustments of commerce — custom
acts strongly to-day in the markets, even in the very teeth
of the fierce competition that exists. Customary prices
modify competition prices ; for very shame large numbers
of people will not buy and will not sell at rates which they
consider abnormal; a latent sense of honor withholds
them ; the tendency of buyers and sellers to establish per-
manent and friendly dealings with each other, a tendency
which I am inclined to think lies at the base of all exchange
and which has created, I suppose, the word " customer," is
still quite strongly traceable, the effort of the human to
assert itself as against the merely mechanical being yet not
quite extinct. Then there are nameless preferences — as of
individuals for particular varieties of goods — or of classes of
buyers for particular classes of sellers; nameless habits,
traditions, predilections or prejudices, and this in ever}'
trade, anomalies which competition ought to level down,
but somehow it does not. Undoubtedly the tendency to a
mechanical level may be said to exist, but that the level or
anything Hke a level is [ever reached is quite a different
thing. It is like a basin of water being carried about in
the hand, the water should go horizontal, but the disturb-
ances arising from the human side effectually prevent this
being realised. Thus competition when one becomes
practically acquainted with it, when one comes to feel its
operation, appears somewhat as a force acting on the human
— acting I would almost say to degrade or warp the human
within one. It does not appear as an isolated and self-
sufficient law of exchange, but just as one factor in the

112 TRADE.

problem, a factor which, if it had everything its own way,
would speedily reduce commerce to a mere mechanical
function devoid of all humanity. This, however, is a result
which is impossible, because no function of human nature
can be separated from humanity and made purely mechani-
cal without ipso facto withering away and dying. And thus
we have the alternative that commerce must either go on
in its present direction and perish, or live by returning to
human relationship as its basis.

" I have tried trade,-'* says Thoreau, ** but I found it
would take ten years to get under-way in that, and that
then I should probably be on my way to the devil." And
again he says, "Trade curses everything it handles." I my-
self have never met anyone who seriously maintained that
success in trade was in the long run compatible with honesty.
These charges however may not be so damnatory as they
appear, for after all perhaps it does not matter so much
whether trade can be carried on honestly or not, as whether
you try to carry it on honestly. The use of trade, as perhaps
of every other pursuit, is mainly to test your probity ; and I
should say that for that purpose it is excellently adapted.
The strains it puts upon you are severe. Quite decisively
you cannot worship both God and Mammon in it. If how-
ever folks generally tried to carry on trade honestly, very
probably a new form of exchange would soon develop itself
which would allow of honesty being realised.

I do not think that the difficulty about trade lies chiefly
in the market, but rather in its influence, indirectly, on pro-
duction. The market on the whole with all its chicanery,
its worship of cuteness, its besting and bluffing, is an intensely
human institution, the very fact that you are forced into
contact with such a number of your fellow-creatures has a
redeeming influence. And some useful qualities, such as
alertness, forethought, patience and judgment, have un-

N

TRADE. 113

doubtedly been developed by it. But its influence on pro-
duction is to my mind deadly and numbing. To feel that you
are working for the market kills all interest in your work.

I feel this quite decisively myself. When I am working
for use^ when I am hoeing potatos and thinking of them
only as food — thinking how somebody will eat them at any
rate — and studying how to grow them best for that purpose,
then I have an assured good before me which no one can
take away. Whatever \h€\x price, these potatos will feed the
same number of human beings. I feel calm and contentful,
and can take pleasure in my work. But when I am working for
the market, when the profit and the gain which I am to de-
rive from the sale of my potatos is the main object before
me — when 1 am considering all along whether each thrust
of the hoe will pay^ whether I had not better scamp this or
hurry over that in view of the falling prices, when I see that
the whole end and purpose of my labor is involved in
doubt owing to trade fluctuations which I cannot possibly fore-
see — then — (how can it be otherwise ?) — I am miserable and
feverish, grudging every stroke of the tool in my hand, each
effort of the muscles, tossed about by uncertainty, wavering
in my plans, and devoid of that good heart which alone is
the basis of all good work. Certainly I may be, shall be,
longer over my work in the first case than in the second;
but I shall produce better stuff"— and if I enjoy my work I
shall not mind an hour additional at it, but if I hate it, ail the
time spent on it is lost. Business conducted on the latter
principle may be tolerable, while the prospect of winning
draws one on, and before the gambling pleasure has palled,
but after that, no 1 The whole of production to-day is vitiated
by the fact that it is production for gain, for profit. There is
no assured good in it, no certain advantage or enjoyment
in the work — success depends on conditions which are
beyond the control of the worker or employer. But it is
I

114 TRADE.

not wise for anyone to let success depend on things which
are beyond his control. The evil principle searches down
and affects the lowermost grades of industry, and there is
hardly a man nowadays to be found who can be said to be
happy in his work. Yet if production were for use, success
would be within the reach of everybody. - No man, if he
only worked for five minutes, need fear that his work will
be lost by a fluctuation of the market. No fluctuation of
the market will spoil the knife-edge that I have been grind-
ing, nor any change in the price of turnips make these that
I am singling less useful for food. My work is secure when
I have done it well, and its result is secure — I can whistle
and sing at my ease.

Trade is against nature, it is in the long run against
human nature, as long as ** What can I get ? " is its motto.
The true nature of man is to give like the sun ; his getting
must be subordinate to that. When giving, his thoughts
are on others and he is " free ; " when getting, his thoughts
are on himself, he is anxious therefore and miserable. As
long as Trade takes " What can I get ? '* for its axiom,
anxiety and misery will characterise all its work — as they
do to-day.

PRIVATE PROPERTY.

" For property alone Law was made."

—Macaulay,

*'For I will have none who will not open bis door to all : treating others as
have treated him.

" The trees that spread their boughs against the evening sky, the marble that I
have prepared beforehand these millions of years in the earth, the cattle that roam
over the myriad hills— they are Mine, for all my children—

'* If thou lay hands on them for thyself alone, thou art accursed."

A FRIEND of mine lately went out for a drive with a gentle-
man who owned a large property. The drive extended some
miles through his estate. " That village is on my land,"
said he ; " at least I believe so. Is it not, coachman ? "
** Yes, sir," said John, touching his hat. ** And I go as far
as the top of that hill, I think." " No, sir (with the same
obeisance), you are mistaken ; this road we are on divides
your property from Lord 's."

In what sense did that gentleman own that land? To own
means to confess, to recognise, to acknowledge. A shep-
herd owns his sheep : he knows each one from the others ;
a man owns his neighbor in the street. But this man did
not even recognise his land when he saw it. His servants,
the common people in his neighborhood, knew more about
his property than he did.

This sounds strange, but it is very common. In fact I
believe there is very little land in this country but what is
owned in this sort of way. The legal owner— even if he
knows the exact boundaries — ^knows little really about his
property. For all information as to the nature of the soil,
the variety of trees and plants which may be found on
115 :i-2

\

Il6 PRIVATE PROPERTY.

it, the crops for which it is adapted, the course of water or
of stone beneath the surface, and so forth, he has to refer
to the common people who are working for him. It is
almost certain that he would not recognise a bit of his own
soil if it was brought to him, and if by any chance a small
portion of the same were to adhere to his hands he would
not own that, but hastily retreating would wash it off, lest
he should appear too familiar with it ! While the people
about him and working on the land are continually think-
ing (as I have often had occasion to notice) what can be
done for the land, how they can best do justice to it — spend-
ing affection and thought upon it — and indeed grieving
when they see it neglected, when they see it undrained pr
insufficiently tnknureid, or allowed to run to waste and
dishevelment — even though these matters are as the saying
is " not their concern," and make no difference to their
pockets. While, I say, the common people spend this love
and affection on the land, the legal owner, as a mle, is
thinking concerning it of only one thing — and that is how
much money he can get out of it. (This was not always so
— at one time, I believe, the landlord was a much more
genuine personage — but I think at the present day in
England it may fairly be stated to be the case.)

The question then is which is the true owner ? Is it the
man who, spending thought and affection and labor on the
land, blesses it with increase, and causes its face to smile
with glad produce ; or is it the man who, hardly knowing
even the boundaries of that which he possesses, and feeling
no warming of the heart towards it to make it beautiful and
blessed, thinks only of what advantage he can gain from it,
and of how much rent the law will allow him to scrape from
its surface ?

And what exactly is this legal ownership ? In the case
of land, it is the power to evict, to prosecute for poaching,

PRIVATE PROPERTY. H'J

to levy rent, &c. It is essentially a negative power. It is
the power io prevent others from using. The gentleman I
mentioned would very likely have the power to turn all the
inhabitants of that village off his land and convert it into a
deer forest. He might prevent anyone from tilling any
part of his soil. The landlords of England might starve
the English people out. The people must pay rent in order
to be allowed to produce their own food. And so with all if
property, the legal ownership is essentially negative ; it is the
power to prevent other people from using. Note well that f
it is not the power to use the thing yourself. A man may
have a fine telescope but be quite incapable of using it ; yet
he has the legal power to prevent anyone else looking
through it. So a man may possess a fine tract of land, and
yet be ignorant of agriculture and incapable even of hand-
ling a spade ; he may not even have the money to set others
to work on it ; the law supplies him with no force or means
wherewith to cultivate that land, it merely supplies him if
he wishes, with a (police) force to prevent others from
using it. And if there are any useful natural products
upon or beneath the surface, it enables him to keep them
all to himself, \

It is as well to remember this. Some people think a
great deal of law and legal right, and no doubt it is quite
proper that they should do so. And indeed it may well be
that this kind of thing is quite necessary at a certain stage
of civilisation ; but it is as well to remember that it is in
itself essentially negative and anti-social. More than that
— and flowing from that — I think it may well be seen that
mere legal ownership is essentially harmful. For it is a i
great power, and like all great power, if not humanised by
loving application it must tend to destruction. The man
who has money is like the man who controls the floodgates
of an estuary. He can turn the current (which is always

Il8 PRIVATE PROPERTY.

flowing) into this channel or that ; he can launch the flood
in devastation over the lands, or he can bind it in its
course to carry the barks of peace and plenty along its
shores ; he can create order and life, or he can precipitate
ruin and death. But there is just this diff*erence — that it is
easier to destroy than to create, and any random applica-
tion of wealth — though strictly legal — being merely careless
or selfish is pretty sure to bring ruin and distress with it,
whereas it is certain that one must give careful thought to
the spending of the same to make it fruitful of order and
of joy.

This only illustrates what Ruskin has said, for those who
would learn from him, that '* wealth is the possessioi^of the
valuable by the valiant.'' Property does not become true
wealth till it comes into the hands of one who is able and
willing to use it well. In the hands of another man it may
just as likely be tilth. Vast tracts of land in the hands of an
owner who gives no care or thought to its use, who perhaps
does not use it at all in any effective sense, but hves in
Paris or London — lands undrained perhaps and breeding
malaria, or left in the hands of agents whose sole business
is to rack-rent the tenants, and so to induce wide-spread
agricultural paralysis — such lands, or rather (since the lands
themselves are right enough) the false ownership in them,
is tilth. Buy costly and elaborate dinners, so that you may
never know the clean and natural desire for food ; buy a
carriage, so that you may never have to walk ; buy heavy-
piled furniture and hangings for your room, so that you may
not breathe the fragrant air of heaven, and you will breed
disease and death — your wealth will have become illth. And
not only for yourself, but — ^if you follow it out — probably
also for those who have to prepare you these things. Use
the same money to set twenty honest people to some whole-
some and useful work ; use it for them freely and friendly

%

't>RIVATE PROPERTY. II9

and it will buy bread and life. — it will feed their hearts
and their bellies both. And not them only but others
whom you cannot see. In the one case your possession
will be a nuisance, in the other it will be a blessing. The
first course is the easy one — of mere legality ; the second
is the difficult one — of humanity.

Thus, as a first step towards the subject before us, I
think we may fairly make the following general statement,
viz., that legal ownership is essentially a negative and
anti -social thing ; and that, unless qualified or antidoted by
human relationship, it is pretty certain to be absolutely
harmfuL In fact, when a man's chief plea is " the law
allows it,'' you may be pretty sure he is up to some mis-
chief !

We may now pass on to a consideration of what property
really means. If legal ownership is a negative thing, is
there some reality of which it is, as it were, the shadow —
which it has at some time or other vainly tried to repre-
sent?

In what sense, for instance, can one really own a material
object, an animal, or even a man ? Let us take the last
first. A slave-owner could by virtue of the law force a
slave to do his will, but there have been many masters who
without application of the law have been able to get the
same result ; by personal ascendancy, by the establishment
of honest and just relation between themselves and the
owned, by affectionate care. In these cases the ownership ^
has been viore complete, the will more faithfully obeyed,
the tie of attachment stronger than chains. This kind of
ownership is, at least, nearer the reality than the other.

So with an animal, affection, courage, personal mastery
produce the true attachment. The dog runs away from his «
legal owner to his true owner. In both these cases, pro-
perty in its reality appears as a trust You areja trust for

120 PRIVATE PROPERTY.

the creature that you own. To keep a man (slave or
servant) for your own advantage" merely, to keep an animal
that you may eat it, is a lie. You cannot look that man
or animal in the face. They may be your property accord-
ing to law, but you have no pleasurable sense of owner-
ship in them, only discomfort.

Now these cases relate to living beings, and what sense
of true ownership you have, arises through right relation to
those beings. But can you have ownership of inorganic
matter — of the mere materials of life ? Say, can you posi-
tively really and truly own a single chemical atom ? Can
you control, can you command it — and how will you begin ?
(I do not say that you cannot — on the contrary, I have
dreamed that there is an authority over these things, quite
similar to, and on the same conditions as the former cases —
but that is a kind of authority very little studied at present.)
Can you say to the little bit of camphor which you wrap
so neatly in paper and put in your drawer, " Little bit of
camphor you are mine " — and in a day or two you open the
paper, and lo ! there is nothing there ? or to the treasures in
chest and closet which the moth and the rust are duly and
diligently all the while corrupting, " Treasures, treasures,
you are all mine, mine. Mine ! '* Yes, you can say so ; but
in what sense exactly do you say so ? Is it merely in the
legal sense, that you rub your hands as you gaze bending
over them, and say, " I can prevent anyone else from using
you " — or is it in a grander sense than this ? And if so, in
what sense ?

Can we get anything out of the word Property itself?
(The collect says : *' O God, whose property is ever to have
^ mercy and to forgive.") That which is proper to a thing.
What are the properties of brimstone — its essential charac-
teristics, qualities, relations to other things ? What is the
property of chalk as distinguished from cheese ? What

N

PRIVATE PROPERTY. 121

a^e the properties of vegetable life, of animal life ? What /
is the essential Property of Man ?

This last is the question of questions. Anjid all the
shows and illusions, is it possible that the reality which we
seek is hidden here ? What if material property is only a
symbol and indication of it? All the scrambling after
calcu^ble wealth, all t^ie delusions and illusions, all the
bog-floundering and fatuous wisp-catching are not in
vain, if they lead us to find an answer to that^ if they
show us at last the wealth which is truly incalculable.

At any r^te I think we can begin to see, in part, that
there is a sense in which a man can own material property
— more true, more real^ than the legal sense. I fancy the
bread, fragrant and sweet from the baking, which a man
eats in peace and thankfulness of heart, becomes his
properly. It passes into his sinews and brain, and serves
his will. It becomes his life, and enters, for the time, into
faithful obedient relation to him, I do not think that the
costly food eaten in greediness of spirit becomes his pro-
perty. I am sure that it torments him a deal, all down
those canals and colons, and is not faithful and obedient
to his will. Sometimes indeed the slave arises and slays
him who should have been his master. I fancy that the
coat which a man wears in singleness of spirit, and ready
if need be to give it to some one who is more in want than
himself, becomes, for the time, h\s property. It enters into
some beautiful and expressive but indescribable relation to
himself, and has more grace than the richest drapery. I
fancy that the ground which a man tills and tends with •
loving care becomes, for the time being, his property. It
answers to hitfty it becomes one of his. qualities. The
young trees put forth their leaves gratefully to him, and the
furrows shoot rich and green, for he blesses them.

Thus, though we may not have got to the bottom of the

122 PRIVATE PROPERTY.

matter yet, it does appear that true ownership in man,
animal, or material wealth, cannot exist without some
living and human relationship to the object owned. With-
out this relation ownership is a mere form ; it may be
legal, but it must be dead, and therefore harmful.

Perhaps the most effective example of this sort of thing
is a man's property in the creation of his own hands.
This would seem to be the original type of private pro-
perty. If I cut a stick in the wild woods, whittle it, peel
it, polish it, and transform it into a walking stick, the
universal consent of mankind allows me a right in that
stick. And why ? Because as far as it is a product of
anything besides Nature, it is a product of my work. I
have entered into the closest relationship to it ; I have put
myself into it ; it has become part of me — one of my
properties.

As the quality of the work rises, as the quantity of good
humanity put into it increases — whether in the shape of
manual effort, or ingenious thought, or loving artfulness —
so does the true value of the object increase ; and so does
the good sense of mankind confirm the right of property
in it to the man who thus produced it. A bow and arrows
may have more work put into it than a walking stick ; it
has more value. A fiddle may have still more. The
violins of Stradivari were his property, commercially speak-
ing, before he sold them ; but indeed he put so much of
his self into them that they still, in a sense, belong to him
— and to no one else — they are vocal with his presence.
And of his great poem, " Leaves of Grass," Whitman says,
" Who touches this touches a man." He has fairly passed
himself into it, and to such a degree that he and it can
never be parted. Types and impressions of the book may
be sold, but it remains his splendid property and glorious
manifestation to all time.

%

PRIVATE PROPERTY. 1^3

To keep then to just the ordinary walks of life, we see
that creation by his own labor is the most original and
indeed valid claim which a man can have to private
property in material wealth, and taking all in all — ruffianism
duly allowed for — the most wjdely accepted. When however
labor becomes more social, and many combine for the
production of one thing, a difficulty arises. The product
is no longer the creation of one man, but of many ; and, as
the process becomes more complex, ultimately of society.
The product therefore is — or should be — the property of
society. The man is paid in counters or checks, which are
called wages, and which represent — or ought to represent —
the average human value which he has put into the product.
The wages are now his private property. They are not
property in so near and personal a sense as the walking-
stick or the bow and arrows ; but from that personal rela-
tionship to one object, which he had before, he has now
exchanged into a social relationship ; and having given so
much human value to society he can now have its equiva-
lent back again in any form that he pleases. He has lost
in intensity of personal ownership, but he has gained in
breadth and variety of command.

Thus we have a second stage of private property when it
becomes social. The human value put into an object does
not come back to the man in that object, but it comes back
to him in counters or checks, that is in money ^ transmutable
into human values in all sorts of objects. But here we
come upon a difficulty which is a very serioiis one — in fact,
quite insurmountable — the crux and the. sphinx-riddle of all
political and social economy, namely how can we reduce
the work of one man and the work of another to one stan-
dard ? What is the measure of human value, and therefore
of all value ? There is, of course, no answer to this. That
is, there is an answer, but it does not admit of being formu-

124 PRIVATE PROPERTY.

lated in words ; the progress of society itself through the
ages is the process by which the answer is being slowly
ground out. From time to time temporary answers are
given, as for instance, " The value of an object is what it
will fetch in the market," or " The value of an object is
proportional to the number of hours of human labor em-
bodied in it," and though one such answer may be an im-
provement on another it is clear that none may stand the
criticism of time — and that the successive social systems
founded on them are from the outset doomed to destruction
— till the millennium is reached . — when society, we sup-
pose, will accept no formulated measures or laws, but will
be ruled from within.

Despite however this huge difficulty in the theory of
value, which thus affects collaterally any definition of private
property in its social aspect, let us cheerfully push on a httle
farther.

AVe have said that if there is to be any distinction be-
tween property in its merely legal sense and in its true
sense, the distinction must reside in the Hving and human
relation involved in the latter as opposed to the former.
But we see also that in the second or social stage of pro-
perty the relationship to the product of your own labor is
weakened. A man instead of having a good yew bow as
the product of his day's work has 5s. This is a decided
falling off— a few counters instead of the sturdy product of
his own thought and toil. What sentiment can he have for
his own five shiUings more than for his neighbor's ? What
private property in them, except in the barest legal sense ?
But this sad relapse is partly made good when he comes to
use his counters. With his five shillings say he buys a
spade. Then this spade — though not the product of his
toil — represents indirectly such a product ; and as he comes
to use the spade day after day, gradually he restores the

s

PRIVATE PROPERTY. 1 2 5

lost sense of personal relationship — the spade grows to his
hand, and at length it becomes his very own, a prolonga-
tion of himself, his property in the most effective and in-
timate sense.

Thus we have properly arising first from individual crea-
tion, then passing through the generalised form of Money,
Or exchange, and finally regaining its personal and private
sanction in use.

Use then is an important element in the definition of
true property. This is clear enough. If I accumulate
counters as the product of my toil, the objects for which I
finally exchange those counters will be — or should be — my
property. But if with those counters I buy a horse, which
kicks me off its back, and continues kicking me off, then
clearly I have lost my property ! True, I may still have
legal property in it — I may still be able to prevent others
from using it — but I shall have no true enjoyment or pos-
session, since I cannot use it myself. Or to take the ex-
ample given by Ruskin : the man on board ship who tied
his gold in a belt round his waist to make it secure, thought
that that gold was his property ; but when the ship capsized
and he was in the water he s^w that he was mistaken ; he
found that he was the property of the gold, for it took him
to the bottom. In order for true ownership, there must be
use, which means mastery, which means exercise of 7viil, of
human power. Every object is a challenge to our man-
hood — till we have mastered it — taken possession of it ;
and it is only " ours " when we have put forth our living
power upon it.

As an example of use, of mastery : I knew a coachman
at a large country house, who was devoted to his master's
horses. When he came into the Stable the horses would
purr and whinny with delight,, kissing him as he went up to
them in their stalls. That man could do anything with those

ia6 PRIVATE PROPERTY.

horses. The Stock Exchange magnate who was driven
behind them to the station each day knew little and cared
less about them. He was the legal owner, but the other
surely was the true owner. Even the powers of the legal
owners are hmited in these cases. It is in vain that the
young lord says that he will take such-and-such a horse out
hunting, if the groom has determined that he shall not — the
latter can invent a score of good reasons to gain his point,
which the former cannot gainsay. The garden practically
belongs to the gardener ; it is he who determines what
flowers shall be cut, what seeds shall be sown ; and it is a
common remark that the servants are the rulers of our large
domestic establii^hments — and just, because authority is the
natural result of labor, whether in production or in
use.

The money form of property is, as I have said, that in
which there is least of the personal and human element,
and so it comes about that the stage of civilisation in which
money is most sought after is just that in which though there
is, as we shall see later on, most worship of private property
there is least realisation of the same in any true sense. To
this stage belongs the mania for accumulation. Money be-
comes an end in itself, apart from all noble and joyful sense
of mastery ; and material objects represent money, instead
of money representing them. Instead of wealth consisting
in mastery, it comes to consist in the number of objects to
be mastered— a pretty quandary ! The unfortunate man who
is beset by this mania can rest no more. He lays field to
field, and house to house ; he buys books, dress, variety of
food, drink, entertainment — each time thinking now he will
be satisfied. And each time finding out his mistake, he
presses forward another step in the same direction (/>.
farther from the ultimate goal). As James Hinton says,
" we are like children who eat, and eat, and eat, ignorant

PRIVATE PROPERTY. 1 27

that food is for nutrition.*' The children have mistaken
the object of food, so we of property.

Food is for nutrition, not for gratification of the sense
of taste, nor for accumulation in the bowels. It nourishes
the body in passing through it. So of property : it is not
for gratification of the sense of ownership, nor for accumu-
lation in strong boxes, store-rooms, and old stockings, that
it exists. The moment it begins to accumulate disease
sets in. " Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,
where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break
through and steal."

Man is like a flame — rwhich shines by virtue of the current
of materials passing through it. Check that current, and
his brightness will be materially diminished ; let the por-
ducts of combustion accumulate if but a few moments,
and his light will be extinguished. Use and pass on, use
and pass on — that is the word, and admit no more than
you can use.

Go into grand houses. What are these books rotting by
hundreds on the library shelves, these boudoirs and best
rooms seldom opened, with fusty smelling furniture, these
forgotten dresses lying in the deeps of unexplored ward-
robes? What are these accumulations of money, of
certificates and securities, of jewels and of plate, hoarded
away in safes and strong boxes and at the bank. They are
the signs of disease. They are similar to the accumula-
tions of fat in an over-corpulent person, of smoke and soot
in an ill-regulated flame. They mar the beauty, the grace,
the dignity, and the power of man. Of dis-ease, remember,
for when did you ever meet an owner of this sort who was
at ease — as your dog lying on the hearth-rug is ac ease —
who owns nothing? England is full of such undigested
wealth ; she is congested, sick, sick almost to death with
it. And while her upper classes are suffering a chronic

128 PRIVATE PROPERTY.

indigestion from this accumulation of dead matter upon
them, while they are rendered imbecile, diseased, and
absolutely pestilent by it, her poor are dying for mere
want of nourishment.

Thus Once more we come to the necessity of use as a
justification of possession ; but this opens up a further and
final question, namely, that of right use. It is obvious that
we cannot allow a man property in a horse, however
often or however well he tnay ride it, if he uses it to run
down old women and children in the street. We take the
knife away from the child because it cannot use it rightly ;
and so the good sense of mankind takes away even the pro-
duct of his own labor from the man who is going to damage
others with it. Society puts forward a claim to over-rule
the individual in this matter. But it does not tell us what
right use is, nor am 1 going to attempt a definition. We
have to work out these things by degrees. , All considera-
tions — the slow progress of society, the successive attempts
of law to come to a satisfactory definition of the rights of
property, and its continual failure^ all point to the fact
that, until the individual and society are properly
harmonised, property cannot be rightly held. It is only
when a man enters into the region of equality that a
solution offers itself. In finding the true Property of Man
he finds the secret of all ownership ; and in surrendering
all rights of private property, and accepting poverty, he
really becomes possessor of all social wealth, and, for the
first time, infinitely rich.

And now a few words in a historical sense. Private pro-
perty, as a legal right, has not always existed in the past,
and will not always in the future. There will come a time
in the future, as there has been in the past, when law will
have nothing at all to say on this subject. It has now in
fact become abundantly clear from late researches that in

PRIVATE PROPERTY. 1 29

a Certain early stage of history Man passes through a
pha^ 6f communism. Columbus in one of his letters
mentions with regard to some West Indian tribes, at the
time of his discovery, that they appeared to hold things in
common. A traveller, lately writing home, says that he
tried to explain to one of the Samoan Islanders of the
Pacific the system that prevails in Great Britain and other
civilised countries — how some people were rich while
others were poor — and that oftentimes one man would be
actually starving, while another would have more bread
than he could eat ; but he, the wretched islander — being
used to a communistic state of society — could not under
stand the possibility of such a situation ; his poor heathen
brain was positively unequal to the task of comprehending
the glorious blessings of our Christian civilisation.

In an early phase of history, then, when men go in
tribes or clans cemented by blood-relationship, the desire
for private property is weak. The elan has property, but
the individual hardly any. In this stage of society, as
would appear from various circumstances, the individual
self is to a large extent lost or fused in the tribal self. The
man owns, but owns in common with his mates (the same
may be seen in ants or bees). He fights fiercely with those
of another clan, and will seize their goods for the benefit
of his own side, or kill them ; but to quarrel with, or steal
from, or injure one of his own people is exceedingly rare-
rarer (as I think all observers agree) than in our more
civilised countries. His self is almost one with the tribal

self.

Later on comes this individuaUsing of self, and this ac-
centuation of private property ; and a huge, elaborate, and
in the present day cumbrous and collapsing, system of laws
arises for the purpose of defining these individual rights,
and the limits of property. What is the meaning of this

K

13© PRIVATE PROPERTY.

vast fungus-growth which has overshadowed civilisation so
long ? It is obvious that it must have had some purpose,
some function, in the history of our race.

I take it that it is a part of the development of man. I
take it that it is necessary that the individual should be
excluded from the tribe (as the child is excluded from its
mother's womb) that he may learn the lessons of indi-
viduality ; that he may learn his powers, and the mastery
over things ; that he may learn his right relations to others,
and the misery of mere self-seeking and individual greed ;
and that having learned these lessons, and so to speak
found the limits of Self, he may once more fuse that Self —
not now again with the tribe, but with something greater
and grander, namely Humanity.

Of this process, then, of the development of the individual,
the institution of private property has, I take it, been the
great engine. Growing up from small beginnings it has gradu-
ally had the effect of separating each individual man from the
community of his fellows ; it has raised a kind of artificial
wall or barrier between. Acting on his specially selfish
instincts it has drawn these out to a degree probably un-
precedented before in the history of his race ; but the
compensation has been that in this isolation it has de-
veloped in man a certain growth in the sense of individu-
ality — which was necessary and which would have been im-
possible without it. Within this network, this honeycomb,
this penitentiary of laws and institutions connected with
private property, each individual as in a separate cell, with
much tribulation, has learned or is learning these lessons.
When they are learnt the need of the barriers and the cells
will disappear ; and, slowly and gradually, as it came, the
institution of private property will pass away.

If I have said anything, therefore, or been understood to
say anything, against property — legal property — I recant

%

PRIVATE PROPERTY. I3I

it. It is a Step, a necessary step, in human development,
like many other things it is an illusion, but it is also an
indication. Man rising from the savage state, reaching as it
were his majority, comes into property (especially is this
true of the present day with its vast accessions of material
power and wealth), and doesn't know what on earth to do
with it ! He hasn't an idea of its uses. He hoards it, he
hides it, he pursues it, he dances round it, hugs it, kisses it,
puts it on his head, his back, circles his arms, his fingers,
with it — falls down and worships it. He locks it in a box
and lies awake at night thinking of it ; he conceals it in his
mattrass ; he buries it in a bank — as a dog does a bone—
and presently the bank grows so big that it has to have
columns and a portico ; he prowls about the shop-windows,
staring at it through panes of glass ; he buys revolvers and
policemen to defend it, and dresses people like himself up
in wigs and gowns to talk wise about it — and then believes
what they say. He behaves in fact like a madman, and
hasn't an idea what he is doing. But there is a method in
his madness nevertheless. He thinks that by all these
antics he is really getting at something substantial — and so
in a sense he is. He is finding out his own properties, he
is learning to possess himself.

The material property which he is pursuing is an illusion.
It serves its purpose for a time. He is very tenacious of it
at first ; it exercises him dreadfully, and he flies into violent
tempers over it. But by the time he has learned to control
these little passions it seems to have lost some of its
attraction ! In the beginning he is a great stickler for his
rights over it, and goes to law considerably, but in the end
he is glad to get done with it and the whole blessed trancla-
ment of cares and anxieties connected with it.

Money may be gain, and it may be power ; but it is not
always either to him who has it. More properly, it is the

K-2

132 PRIVATE PROPERTY.

symbol of an unknown Gain, which he may attain to — it
is the symbol of an unknown Power, which lies within
him. When the realities are seized, the symbol will drop
off as useless — or be only used as a symbol When a man
has learned whose superscription there is on the coin he
uses, he has learned everlasting life.

To return to the historical clue : the practical advantages
which money gives in the present day — such as travel, art,
books, leisure — must not be ignored or undervalued.
They are all part of education and development, and are
valuable at a certain stage. But as society progresses, and
emerges from the child state, even these values of private
riches tend to become daily less. Art galleries, free libraries,
and the solution of the industrial problem will provide
everybody with the three last ; travel is already marvel-
lously cheap, and will become cheaper. Before so very
long the need and the use of private property will disappear
from social life. It will figure only as an encumbrance ;
law, as I have said, will cease to take any cognizance of its
existence ; and the curve of progress will bring us back
to the communism of early society on another and higher
plane of human development.

The problem of life is ultimately extraordinarily simple ;
and when society has recovered from the daze and night-
mare which oppresses it, and has re-established the simple
honest relation between man and man, it will be seen to be
so. All the problems of Society depend ultimately on the
problem of the individual's own Hfe. All questions of
material property come back ultimately, as already hinted,
to the question, what is the property of Man ? When the
key to that has been found all these other difficulties
vanish entirely — like a flake of snow touched by a drop of
water. They disappear and exist no more. The questions
of food^ clothing, housing, literature, etc., will not then need

PRIVATE PROPERTY. 1 33

to give anyone a moment's anxiety. As to travelling, " it
is not worth while/' as Thoreau says, "to go round the
world in order to count the cats in Zanzibar." If you do
not happen to have the means to go to Brazil, set out travel-
ling to Heaven. It is a longer journey, and you will see
more by the way. Nay, I would say to the wealthy, travel
in your own township. Put off your fine clothes and go
among the poor and oppressed ; work at the bench with
the carpenter's son, and in the pit with the collier ; go on the
road with the tramp and lighten the way a little for his feet
— and you will hear things you never thought to have heard,
you will see things that in all your grand tours you never
imagined it possible to see.

Like other problems, the problem of property is best
solved indirectly. That is, not by seeking material
wealth directly, but by seeking that of which material
wealth is only the symbol. "Seek ye first the king-
dom of God and all these things shall be added

unto you."

Vaguely metaphorical as these words sound, yet I believe
they express a literal fact. To this generation, weary with
seeking after material things, worshiping its gold and silver,
its steam-engines and its commerce, they express the fact
that not in this way can it gain what it seeks. Its idols are
dead ; for all the worship that is rendered to them they
grant nothing in return. The quest is illusive. Seeking ease
we have found nothing but dis-ease; scrambHng for wealth
our civilisation has become poverty-stricken beyond all
expression ; worshiping mere technical knowledge we have
forgotten the existence of wisdom ; and Setting up material
property as our God we have dethroned the divine in our
own natures. Not till this last is restored can we possibly
attain to possession of the other things. Materials are not
to be worshiped — ^they must be commanded. Nature is

134 PRIVATE PROPERTY.

one ; she is loyal to herself from the centre to the very
circumference. Till you have established a right relation
with that centre, till you have loyally sought and found
within yourself the password, do not think she will be such a
fool as to surrender to you her outposts. On the contrary,
till such time, she will taunt you and deride you ; she will
tantalize you with shadows and mock you with illusions of
gain — but in reality you will have nothing, enjoy nothing,
nor be capable of owning anything.

Finally, and lest we should wander away into mere
abstractions and generalisations, let us try and apply some
of our principles to practice. It seems to me that the
principles which I have sought to establish art eminently
practical. I have tried to show that wealth in order really
to bt wealth must be humanised. Mere legal possession is
nothing, or worse than nothing ; it is an injury to the com-
munity. This is, alas ! only too well illustrated in our
modern society. The wealth of the wealthy is for the most
part a dead inhuman wealth — a corruption — a mortification.
The land is not owned in any true sense, it is left in the
hands of agents and stewards, who must, from the nature of
the case, act on a rule of inhumanity. The great industries
are not owned in any true sense, but the shareholders and
bondholders to whom they legally belong live ignorant even
of the nature of their possessions, and leave directors and
managers to screw down their workmen — satisfied so long
as they provide the usual dividend at the end of the half
year. What we have to do — what society has to do— is to
divide this false ownership from the true ownership, and
cast it out ; and that quickly, for already the process of
mortification is far gone, and only a serious operation can
avert death. We must say to the landholders of this and
other countries, ** Unless you put your lands to some
human use, unless you hold them in trust for the good of

PRIVATE PROPERTY. 13S

the people, we shall take them from you — and that quickly
— for by every acre that you are now devoting to your own
aggrandisement merely you are murdering a brother." To
the man who now owns ten farms, we may fairly say, " If
you like to go and live on one of your farms to till and
tend it, well and good ; do so by all means ; that is true
ownership. But the ownership you have in the other nine
farms is a mere legal ownership ; you cannot till and tend
them too ; all you are doing with them is to * prevent
others from using them ' by charging rent upon them. Here
your ownership is absolutely harmful, so without more ado,
clear out ! "

And to the shareholders and bondholders of this and •
other countries we may fairly say, **AVhat are you doing with
your properties ? Have you any human relation to them
at all? Do you come together at your meetings to con-
sider how best to administer them for the public good, how
to turn out the usefullest and most genuine articles, how to
compass the welfare of the men engaged in them ? If not,
then you are doing nothing, and worse than nothing with
them — you are using your legal power to aggrandise your-
selves, to enrich yourselves at the cost of these others, you
are by just so much preventing others from the use of these
properties, you are by just so much strangling the natural
life of the people — begone ! the whole pack of you, and let
us never see your faces again ! "

Clearly the sooner we get rid of all mere law in the i
matter of property the better. The good sense of mankind,
as I have already said, will always allow a man his claim in
the product of his own hands, or his own labor ; and the
same good sense will never dispute a man's right in that
which he puts to good human use. These may safely be
left to the unwritten law of all ages. Whatever is not of
these is of the devil. The claims which people put in for

136 PRIVATE PROPERTY.

wealth for which they never labored, the rights which they
assume in property which they use to degrade others with,
are of the devil And these are the claims and the rights
which written and printed laws are specially constructed to
secure. It must be one of our most practical objects to
break down by degrees this whole apparatus of chicanery,
and so at length io free true property from the vast accumu-
lations of false ownership which in later times have so dis-
guised the reality that we hardly any longer know what
it is.

Many immediate applications might be made of the
principles which we have indicated. Thus not only, as we
have said, might ownership in land be at once limited to
occupying ownership, but the same principle might be (more
roughly) applied to personal property. We might, I mean,
at once and as a first approximation, say that no one could
fairly and humanly use an income of over ;f 5,000 a year (I
should not like myself to have to use a tenth part of it) and
so by a cumulative or prohibitive taxation transfer at once a
large quantity of idle and dead wealth into the occupancy of
the people for living and public uses. And I maintain that
such measures as these are in the highest degree practical,
simply because they involve a question of life and death to
the nation. England and indeed all " civilised " countries
to-day are simply in advanced stages of mortification. The
accumulation of dead matter upon them is such that if it
continues to take place much longer the organism as a
whole must inevitably perish. The belt of gold is taking
us swiftly and surely to the bottom. Nothing but a vitalis*
ing of the national possessions by use — use by the people,
andy2?/' the people ^can save us, and already even for that
the time is short.

So true is it that the moral and ultra-moral laws pene-
trate right down into the concerns of ordinary life. Far and

'N

PRIVATE PROPERTY. 137

away up beyond all our theories and definitions stands the
true Manhood — the real Property of Man — of which the
other is only the sign and emblem. Are we true to that
invisible point, that inward polestar of our human nature —
are we masters of wealth in that invisible region — then we
descend with authority upon outward possessions to master
them, and our national life is sane and prosperous -, but
without such radiation from within all our gold is simply
ashes.

To build up this Supreme Life in a people — the life of
Equality — in which each individual passes out of himself
along the lives of his fellows, and in return receives their
life into himself with such force that he becomes far greater
as an individual than ever before — partaker of the supreme
power, and well nigh irresistible — to build up this life in a
people may well be a task worthy of the combined efforts
of poets, philosophers, and statesmen. The whole of history
and all the age-long struggles of the nations point to this
realisation. Even now society like a chrysalis writhes in
the birth-throes of the winged creature within. Equality-^—
the vanishing of the centuries-long conflict between the
individual and his fellows — the attainment by each man of
a point where all this war of interests ceases to exist, and
the barriers which divide man from man are thrown down
— this is, indeed, that Freedom for which all of history has
been one 'long struggle and preparation. No mere out-
ward equality, no monotony of external condition — far from
it — ^but the equality of the ** members of the body '* fulfilling
their various functions in perfect inward harmony. This
state of society, the ideal and the dream of so many ages,
is after all not so impossible of realisation, not so very ex-
travagant. If a single healthy human or animal body
exists, surely a healthy human society may exist. In the
backward past, in the early communal life to which we

138 PRIVATE PROPERTY.

have alluded, this state of society has existed in its embryo-
nic or seed-like form, and when the immense nightmare
of what we call civilisation, when the long period of growing
pains and bitter negative experience which we are now
going through has passed away, it will exist again in its
glorified and universal form. The morning stars will
once more sing together, and exiled man will re-enter the
gates which the flaming sword so long has guarded.

\

THE ENCHANTED THICKET.

"And the thorns sprang up and choked them."

In gathering together the foregoing papers into one volume
I would fain say a last word by way of appeal to you the
specially wealthy and respectable classes. The situation is
so grave, the crisis hastens so, all over the civilised world —
what are you going to do ; what part are you going to play
in the great drama on which the curtain is just rising ?

As one walks through the vast polite wildernesses of the
West End of London, and the endless suburban villa-
regions of all our great towns — in extent and wealth and
standard of luxury visibly and rapidly increasing from year
to year — as one sips one's tea in the drawing-room, or listens
to the after-dinner conversation over the wine and walnuts,
there steals upon one I know not what sense of ante-
diluvian slumber, of strange and may be fatal lethargy.
All is so elegant, so easy, so finished * — one dreams on as
in an enchanted palace, and the noise of the actual world
dies out at last from one's ears. And yet, when a man
comes to look into it, he sees that it is just here, in these
enchanted palaces, that the danger and the disease of
modern society lies. He cannot help feeling that these who
live here are really, as William Morris calls them, the

* '* Yesi that is just the worst of it," sud a Canadian friend of mine one day in
the Park, as I remarked upon the elaborate nicety and finish of the equipages,
dresses, &c., of the passers bjr, <* that is just the worst of it, it is finished^-there is
nothing more to come out of it all."

k^

•^

140 THE ENCHANTED THICKET.

dangerous classes. Not the poor half-starved wretches,
puny and stunted in person, and empty in purse,
who mad with rage are belched forth in their
thousands and hundreds of thousands from the slums
of our great cities — not these, terrible as they are,
are the real danger. They are only the reaction, the pro-
test, the necessary outcome, and perhaps after all the
hopeful ending of a great wrong. It is in these great clotted
and congested centres which call themselves " society," but
through which the true life-blood of society does not circu
late — in the slow poison and paralysis of the life there — in
the fatal mortificatiort of these centres, which with their
vast wealth and influence spread claws of contagion all
tlirough the vital organism in which they occur, that the
serious peril lies, which perhaps only a serious convulsion
may avert.

In truth the very extent of these congested regions is
already a difficulty. For they are so vast that you who live
within them have hardly a chance to know what is going oii
in the real world. The cry of the starving children, the
price of whose maintenance for a week is consumed by you
in a single ordinary meal, reaches not your ears. It has too
far to travel. Sometimes indeed a tale of suffering may
penetrate, but it sounds far off like a dream. How can you
do anything? A thousand shackles, worse than any
tangled thicket, have grown up round the sleeping soul.

You sit in rooms crowded with knick-knacks, elegant
trifles from all parts of the world. They are beautiful \ I
have not a word to say against them. And in the next
house the rooms are crowded with similar trifles, and in the
next, and the next ; and for miles round the same. The
servants have to dust them every day, the owners never look
at them — ^hardly know what they are. For whom do they
exist? If in a plainly furnished cottage one such thing

THE ENCHANTED THICKET. 141

were seen, it would actually be examined — it would be a
delight, a real curiosity, a bright suggestion of form and
color, an adornment of work-a-day life ; but here it is so
gratuitously useless that it enfeebles the mind that gazes on
it ; it is no adornment, for there is no real life to adorn.

It is all congestion. Congestion ^t the dance— so many
people, such dresses, that dancing is impossible. Conges-
tion at the dinner party— congestion in twelve courses ; so
much to eat that eating is impossible. Congestion of books
— so much to read, that reading is impossible. Congestion
in church — stitched and starched up to the eyes (while the
servants at home are preparing the roast beef and plum
pudding). Congestion at the theatre, at^the concert, yawning
in dress-clothes on the front seats ; while the real enjoyers
and observers are out of sight behind. Such a congestion
of unused wealth and properly, such a glut, as surely the
world before has never seen, and to purge which away will
surely require such medicine as the world before has never
seen — no gilded pill or silent perambulator this time, but a
drastic bolus plowing its way through the very frame of
" society," not without groans and horrible noises.

And through this maze of congested life— of interests
which have ceased to be interesting, of enjoyments which
have become bores— to pick the way, what an art it has
become ! Visitors call in the afternoon, and visits have to
be made. The long day has to be eked out — now a cup of
tea, now a five-course meal, now a little coffee, and now a
turn at the piano. (And all the time what poor girls are
pining, what mothers are dying for want of a little help, a
httle sympathy !) And ever the smallest crumbs of incident
to be worked up into "convereation." Some get quite
clever at this. They always say the right thing at the
right time, are sympathetic, bright, entertaining. Yes —
while Nero is fiddling, Rome is burning. Have you no

s

V

142 THE ENCHANTED THICKET.

Other use for that sensitive heart, that ready tongue, which
nature has given you, than to perpetuate this Fool's Para-
dise of polite trifling.

A Paradise truly. The hot water arrives so punctually
at the bedroom door, the carpets are so soft and warm, the
spoons so bright and clean — surely there can't be much
amiss in the world. If only these demagogues would keep
quiet, these few crack-brained Ruskins — and the faint wolf-
howling there far down in the conscience.

Do you not attend church on Sunday, and are you not
very philanthropic ? Do you not tell each other sad stories
about the poor over your ice-pudding, till your lips are
pursed with pity ? (or is it the pudding ?) Do you not
undertake excursions to the East End, and get deeply in-
terested in the general question of slums ? Is it not all
very nice, and just as it ought to be, and wouldn't the poor
soon get their wrongs redressed if instead of naughtily riot-
ing they were to wait for you to come in your fur cloaks
like good fairies^ and turn their wretched dens into plea-
sant palaces ?

And yesterday a woman that I know died — died wash-
ing — washing rich folks' clothes — at sixpence a dozen.
Sixpence a dozen all round — mark that 1 — a halfpenny
each. Not many handkerchiefs and collars when its " all
round " — mostly shirts and big things. " It seems a many
times passing through your hands even for a penny each,''
as one in the same line of life said to me — " two rubbings,
dollying, two rinsings, wringing, putting out to dry, taking
down, folding, mangling, starching and ironing each thing."

It was a good thing, wasn't it, that she died quietly, poor
thing, so gentle and loving — without any fuss or rioting in
the streets or making comfortable people uncomfortable ?
Of course our clothes are not washed at that price — no
blood on them. We all know that. At any rate, we pay

N

THE ENCHANTED THICKET. 1 43

fair enough ; if the people whom we employ put the wash-
ing out on scandalous terms that is their fault, not ours.
We have so many things to attend to, so many big philan-
thropic schemes, we can hardly be expected to know all
about our laundress.

And to-day a hundred porters and signalmen have been
discharged from one of the large railways, so as to effect a
saving of ;^5ooo a year in expenses. (See note p. 30.) It
would have been a pity, wouldn't it, to reduce the dividend in
order to save those hundred good industrious folk and their
families from being turned into the streets ? The diminution
of dividend would have very nearly amounted to twopence
halfpenny (this is a fact) on every ;^ioo share. Think of that !
Twopence halfpenny ! It was a good thing those hundred
families were turned off, or you might have actually had to
go short of a box of chocolate next Christmas.

Is there no sense of sympathy, of responsibility, of mere
duty even, in these matters ? Has the cry of Cain, " Am
I my brother's keeper?" become stereotyped upon the
lips of the wealthy ? When the shareholder comes for his
dividend, when the bondholder comes for his bond, is it
nothing to him that human flesh has to submit to the knife
in the process, as long as he gets what the law allows him
to claim ? Is all humanity dead out of the world, and are
you rich going to continue for ever this practice of living out
of the degradation and death of the poor, which has already
become so famiHar to you that it seems the most natural
thing possible ?

And yet after all has been said, do I not know well
enough the tender heart that beats within you — for all that
the enchanted thicket has grown so strong and tall ? You
men of the upper classes — numbers of you — so devoted,
chivalrous, honorable, attending to the welfare of servants
and dependents, conscientious on committees, indefatigable

144 THE ENCHANTED THICKET.

in generosity towards the needy, fairly perplexed night and
day in the study how best to distribute your wealth ; yet
has it never occurred to you that it would be better once
for all to abandon this everlasting game of robbing Peter
to pay Paul — this Sisyphus labor, this rolling of stones
uphill only that they may roll down again ? What a relief
surely it would be ! Here on the one hand, with infinite
labor in your profession, with infinite care and anxiety in
your trade, with infinite trouble even in keeping account of
all your rents and dividends, are you gathering a heap to-
gether — only to cause yourself fresh labor fresh anxiety and
care in distributing it again, perhaps to the very people you
got it from. Why not save this double labor from the
beginning ? Let the two minuses obliterate each other and
make once more a plus in your life. Here is a circular
lying on my table addressed to Railway shareholders, and
asking subscriptions for a benefit society for the men.
What is the good of my first taking a part of their
earnings from the men, and then giving the same
back to them in a benefit society ? What is the good
of first depriving the people at large of the means
of clothing and feeding themselves, and then coming
back to them with clothing clubs and soup kitchens ?
What is the good of forcing them to work for me under
filthy and harmful conditions, and then building hospitals
to cure them of the diseases and injuries that I have
caused? I might have saved myself the trouble and
them the insult. Or do we of the upper classes constitute
such a special providence in relation to the working masses
that unless their means of livelihood all passed through our
hands it would not get properly distributed ? You men —
educated men as you purport to be — surely you must see
the contradiction which is involved in your mode of life, the
absurdity ; if, above all things you are practical, do not let

THE ENCHANTED THICKET. 1 45

this waste and misapplication of your social labor con-
tinue.

And you, women of the same class, who have such
capacities of love and sympathy — this life that you lead,
with its perpetual denial of humanity, cannot satisfy you
for long. You mothers, we plead for the thousands ot
mothers who loving their children like you have to
see the little things almost starving before their eyes.
You young women! think of the girls in back courts
and alleys or even [in rude 'country villages or mining
districts — gentle creatures full of Capacities for gaiety,
romance, beauty, like yourselves, but too soon to be
hardened into spiritless drudges — think ! to know you, to
have you for a friend, would be a dreiam of splendor.
How much you might give if you would only come nearer
these ! Think if you only lived in a plaCe where these
could run in and out freely without fear — some simple little
cot, where the tide of humanity would wash right up to the
door. How they would love you ! How that bright gift of
tact and sympathy would cheer them I how your ornaments
and acquisitions would then become real adornments and
curiosities — how you could find a hundred uses for them,
and for ypur books which now lie congested on your
shelves. What a busy life — how much of interest, possibly
even of love 1 But now you are shut away — ^you are in
prison. An impenetrable chevanx defrise of aimless heart-
less conventionalities and luxuries forbids the entrance of
any natural human being. The child of drunken parents
may be driven out into the street — but it will not come to
you for a refuge. No little naked feet will stain your
carpet with sacred dirt. The young girl, pure minded as
yourself, but unable to bear the sight of her poverty-stricken
parents may be driven too into the street — but remember
that in the hour of her despair she will not come to you ;

146 THE ENCHANTED THICKET.

she will not open her heart to you whose fingers are loaded
with rings and who have as many dresses as a fancy-woman
— for how should she suppose that you will understand ?
These high walls, these damask curtains round the windows,
these retinues of servants, how shall she penetrate through
them to you ?

The hedge is growing thicker, my child, thicker and
taller round you, and your soul sleeps within.

Ah ! I know how your heart bleeds in silence over these
things — how you curse the fate which brought you into this
world. But how can you move ? A thousand chains de-
tain you ; round you in every direction stretches the web of
polite society — attractive certainly in some respects, but
O how poisonous and paralysing. In this you were born ;
every fibre of it has entered into your body — how can you
escape from it ?

The large mirror stands on the toilet-table, and another
still larger on the floor. Wherever you look it is only
yourself that you see. The servants study your conveni-
ence — these wardrobes and chests, they are all for your
dresses. You who have so desired to give yourself to
others, whose loving heart has so yearned to pour itself out,
to lose itself, forget itself altogether in others — you are
chained to the dead body of yourself. This weary weight
you drag from room to room, you cannot escape from it —
at the dance, at the concert, it is there. Men smirk round
it ; servants offer it every attention ; but you, the living soul,
who would gladly go on your knees and scrub the floor for
the feet that you love — hold ! Do nothing of the kind, for
that would be highly vulgar !

O it is hateful, it is intolerable. Take a torch and go
right down to the basement ....

No, well do not do that ; for after all even a desirable
mansion may come in useful for some purpose. But you.

THE ENCHANTED THICKET. 147

if anyway possible, clear out of it, yourplace is not here,
and between these walls built on the despair and degrada-
tion of others you will find it as hard to lead a true life as
it is " for a camel to go through the eye of a needle."

The evil base of our society eats right through. That
our wealthy homes are founded on the spoliation of the
poor vitiates all the life that goes on within them. Some-
how or other it searches through and degrades the art,
manners, dress, good taste of the inmates. While there is
time and before the day of reckoning comes — before the
fountains of the great deep are broken up in our vast cities,
and chaos horrible ensues — ^let us hope that some at least
of these classes will awake from the fatal slumber which
enthrals them — a true awakening, no mere uneasy stretch-
ing and turning to sleep again. Through the tangled
thicket there is but one deliverer that can make his way,
and as of old his name is the Prince of Love.

In conclusion, and to look at the mattei* quite practically,
there seems but one immediate step that the wealthy
despoiler can take — ^which at the same time is a most
obvious step — and that is, at once or as soon as ever he
can, to place his hfe on the very simplest footing. And
this for several reasons. First, because if he must live by
other people's labor — and in some cases doubtless his
"education" will leave him no other alternative — it is
clearly his duty to consume as little of that commodity as
he possibly can — (and anyhow experience shows that it is
impossible to live very luxuriously on one's own labor
alone). Secondly, because only by living simply — that is, on
a level of simplicity at least equal to that of the mass of the
people — is it possible to know the people, to become friends
with them, to gauge their wants, &c. ; and here I may say
that I do not see that it is the least necessary for a well-to-
do person to trouble himself or herself about big philan-

148 THE ENCHANTED THICKET.

thropic schemes, or even to join committees of any kind
(unless having a special turn that way) — if such an one will
only go and live quite quietly in town or country in such
an unpretending manner that all, even the poorest, will
have ready access without shame, he (or she) will soon
find plenty of use for their surplus, and with a certainty of
not being imposed upon which they cannot possibly have
under other circumstances. Thirdly, because by such a
simple life the cares and anxieties of a luxurious household
— the innumerable fidgets and worries and obstacles to all
true life, together with the dread about being able to
maintain it all in the future — are once and for all got rid
of. A great load drops ofi^, and the Rubicon once crossed
the difficiilties attending the change are seen to be nothing
compared with the increased happiness which it brings.
Fourthly, because it is only on the knowledge and habits
gained in a simple self-supporting Ufe that the higher know-
.edge and the fine arts are really founded, and it is as im-
possible for a statesman to look after a nation properly
unless he is acquainted with the first elements of social
hfe as it is for an artist to paint prop erly who does not
realise the value of homely details, or for a capitalist to do
justice to his works and workmen who is ignorant (as is
commonly the case nowadays) of the rudiments of the
industry which he professes to organise.

And so on. In every department, of morality, good
taste, common-sense, private and public expediency, a
change in the lives of the rich is called for. It is not
necessary to know or to argiie about all the changes that
will follow. This first step is obvious, and if you take
that, the next will become clearer.

1^

^^mnii^

fm "

THE UNIVaonv OF MICHIGAN
GRADUATE UBRARY

m

- DAHDUE

fls?

£i

)

l'

f

M

'M

^

DO NOT REMOVE

OR
MOTILATE C

K •

iJ